I have a couple of mystery birds up my sleeve. Here’s the second one.
Keep in mind that it’s harder to identify a bird from a still photograph than it is when you see it move. Behavior, posture and eating habits are huge clues to a bird’s identity.
However, this bird has several characteristics that help identify it. Notice…
The size and color of its beak
The size of the stripe above its eye
The brown patch on its face
Its brown wings and odd wing bars
The faintly striped beige area around its neck
The fluffy look of its head.
What species do you think this is? Can you tell anything about its age and sex?
Have you ever noticed that feathers are different shapes depending on their location on a bird’s body? This is especially true of flight feathers: remiges (wings) and rectrices (tails).
Shown above are six primary and six secondary feathers from a sharp-shinned hawk. The feathers are lined up in the order they appear on the bird’s wing with the wingtip at left.
Notice how each feather is a slightly different shape than the one next to it. This difference allows each feather to contribute its own contour to the overall flight surface of the wing. In this illustration there’s a contour gap after feather P5 because only six of the sharp-shin’s ten primaries are shown — P10 to P5 — before jumping to the secondaries.
Look closely and you’ll see that the edges of the sharp-shin’s primaries are not uniformly curved. (Click here for close-up.) Instead they have notches on the wide vane and emarginations on the narrow vane.
Sharp-shinned hawks pursue small birds through the forest and make quick turns through narrow openings to avoid obstacles. This means their wings are short and their primaries are deeply notched and emarginated to accommodate their hunting style.
Peregrines’ flight requirements are much different. They dive at top speed in the open air to capture their prey. They don’t need to avoid trees so their wings are long and their feather edges are nearly smooth for rapid dives and precision flight. Click here to see that peregrines’ primary feathers are less curved the sharp-shins’. Only their P10 feather has a noticeable notch.
You can examine the feathers of many birds at The Feather Atlas website where I found this photo. It’s a National Forensic Laboratory project of U.S. Fish and Wildlife in which they make high-resolution scans of the primaries, secondaries and tail feathers of each species. There are separate scans for juveniles and females/males if the feathers look different.
I’m sure you’ll enjoy browsing the site and learning more about feather shapes.
(photo from The Feather Atlas. Click on the photo to see the original webpage. NOTE: It is illegal to possess any feather without a permit. Click here for details.)
Century plants grow as a rosette of leaves without flowering for 10 to 60 years (depends on climate). When the plant is ready to bloom it shoots up a stalk as much as 26 feet tall, then produces flowers and dies. The stalk on the plant at Phipps is so tall they had to remove part of the glass roof to let it keep growing.
In this photograph it wasn’t flowering yet, but I hear it’s doing so now. That means you don’t have much time left to see it. Just like the American Columbo, it will die after it blooms.
To see the entire plant you’ll have to visit two places at Phipps. The bottom of the plant is in the Desert Room, the top is visible from the Japanese Garden.
Though this particular plant is less spectacular from a distance, you can see it from the street at Schenley Park Visitors Center. Here’s what it would probably look like if it grew outdoors.
Beth Fife called this afternoon to tell me she was dispatched downtown to pick up a dead peregrine. As she made the trip, she hoped it had been misidentified.
Blue slammed into the Grant Building around midday today. She was probably learning to hunt or playing a Chase Me game and not paying attention. Witnesses say she crumpled and fell to an upper roof of the Grant Building where her body was retrieved.
There are now only three youngsters at Gulf Tower for Dori and Louie to feed and teach — all of them male. Since June 24th Dorothy and E2 have had only three youngsters at Pitt: two males and one female. However, there is one bright spot.
The two young female peregrines in rehab – one from Gulf, one from Pitt – are graduating to the Flight Pen at the rehab center this week. They’ll tone up their wing muscles and be ready for release next week if all goes well. They are:
White, the Gulf Tower female who banged her head. (This sounds eerily similar to Blue’s accident.)
The other day a Buick-sized fly buzzed around the room and banged against my office window. They always show up when the loading dock door stays open for a long delivery.
I don’t know why we get such enormous house flies but after they wander indoors they get lost in the dark hallways and fly up to the light. Eventually they make it to my office.
I try to swat them and fail. Am I uncoordinated?
No. Flies are masters at avoiding swats.
Back in 2008 researchers at Caltech used high speed, high definition video to record the movements of fruit flies to see how they avoided a swat threat. Amazingly, the flies positioned themselves for escape within 100 milliseconds of noticing the approaching swatter. It didn’t matter if they were eating, resting or walking, they shifted their weight and were ready to escape with a mere flex of their legs.
The researchers concluded that fruit flies have fast-acting brains and the ability to plan ahead. Who knew! Flies plan ahead!
So how to swat one? According to Michael Dickson of Caltech, we should creep up on it slowly because it doesn’t register slow movement, then “aim a bit forward of its location and try and anticipate where the fly will jump when it first sees your swatter.”
In other words, we’re supposed to plan ahead of the fly. 😉
(photo of a house fly by Alvesgaspar from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original.)
So what happened after that young peregrine caught his supper?
In my Lessons for Life blog Michelin was in the midst of a prey exchange with his mother Maddy. He was excited and focused and posed upside down with his feet in the air.
Here’s the last photo in the sequence.
Michelin caught his meal and flipped right-side up. Pumped with victory he’s flying off to eat it, squawking all the way.
Sigh. It’s been four to six weeks since we had nesting peregrines to watch on the webcams.
Many of us are going through withdrawal, but there’s hope that we won’t have to stop watching yet. There are still a couple of active nests to feed our addiction.
On Friday I got a newsletter from Cornell Lab of Ornithology with a link to their nestcams. Of their six active nests, my favorite is the Chimney Swift in New York state. What a cool C-shaped nest of tiny twigs! Click on the image above to see for yourself.
And if you have another favorite nestcam let us know where it is by leaving a comment.
We have to watch birds on camera!
(Screen capture of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Nestcam home page. Click on the image to go to the site.)
If you have a bird bath I’m sure you’ve noticed a lot more activity there during these long, hot days.
Tuesday evening my bird bath was so popular that nine birds lined up waiting while a robin monopolized the water. The group included song sparrows, mourning doves, starlings and house sparrows.
When the robin finally gave way it was fascinating to watch everyone drink. All of the birds except the doves put their beaks in the water then turned their faces to the sky to swallow, just like the blue-winged goose pictured at left.
The doves were different. They put their beaks in the bird bath and sucked up the water like the pigeon shown at right.
Why do they drink so differently?
The answer is complex and depends upon the species. It’s partly related to their anatomy (#4) and partly style. Birds have at least five different ways of drinking:
Sip and Tilt up: Most birds use this method (and the next one) to collect water in their beaks. Then they turn their heads up to send the water to the back of their throats.
Suck and Tilt: Looks a lot like the first method but is quicker because they collect a lot more water by actively sucking it up.
Sucking without raising their heads: This is the method favored by Columbiformes (doves and pigeons) and helps identify birds as members of this order.
Tongue drinking: Birds who sip nectar are experts at this method because their tongues are specially formed for their favorite food. Watch hummingbirds and nectar eaters, such as lorikeets, and you’ll see them use their tongues to drink.
Drab gray with a plain head and chest, a dark stripey back and almost plain wings, he’s not in my field guide.
His large bill and upright, legless stance give me a hint but the real clue is to watch his behavior.
This bird is noisy and rarely alone. He chases and begs from red-bellied woodpeckers. He doesn’t have red on his head because he’s a baby — a fledgling red-bellied woodpecker.
