The term endemic when applied to bird species means restricted to a relatively small geographical area. For example the Japanese White Eye lives on the Hawaiian Islands.
But it lives elsewhere too and is not peculiar to the islands. Therefore it must simply be considered eccentric.
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Birds survive by finding their feeding niche. One wading bird might have a long curved beak. Another a short straight one. Different depths in the sand… different food. It keeps them from getting cranky with each other. Mostly.
This one has found an unusual niche. And is not afraid to stick his nose in it.
He roots around under seaweed. Turns small stones over. Digs in the sand. For food other birds missed. This starts very young. On the tundra
Mom and dad both build a nest there and share hatching duty. Then both help around the house for a couple of weeks. But after that the female skedaddles and leaves him in charge.
Since he doesn’t cook any better than most dads, the fledglings are pretty much on their own when it comes to finding food. They learn to look under rocks and leaves. That doesn’t leave much for dad to do. So he watches for predators and just hangs out till they learn to fly. It works out.
Very like Sunday afternoons. When dad’s got the kids? They all eat anything they want. He watches football. Everybody’s happy. : )
Distinguishing Marks: In summer black above white below. Some white on the face and a few speckles on the breast. In winter loses the white and turns brown on top.
What is it? Hover to find out.
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An adjective having to do with animals, in our case birds, that live near the surface of the ocean far from land. Fine. But I can't help wondering. What's the noun? Nearest I can find is Pelage: "hairy covering of mammals." Obviously different roots. :)
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A large movement of birds into an area somewhat unusual for them, often because of the availability of food. Or high taxes in the northeast.
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Rookery is used to describe a place where birds get together to nest and fledge their young. It is most commonly used for crows and ravens which sometimes build nests close together in the tops of trees. The name comes from, not surprisingly, the Rook which is a common European cousin to crows.
Now you know all about crows. So I don’t need to tell you what young birds just leaving the rookery are called. Do I?
No. After all, it’s not like you’re some Bird-Call rookie. :)
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Birds are different from other animals. They have feathers. Obviously. They fly. Equally obvious.
Not so obvious: they have air sacs.
Ok what are air sacs? Little balloons in their bellies. And abdomen. And even in their bones (tiny ones of course).
What do they do? They hold air before and after it passes through the lungs.
How does that help? Air is pushed through the lungs in one direction rather than in and out like us.
And? Their lungs can extract more oxygen than ours.
Does that make them somehow better than us? I can't say. But one thing's for sure--I wouldn't make it across the Gulf of Mexico in a couple of nights without any rest or even a martini. :)
If you're interested, here's a cool little clip on YouTube which explains it simply in a delightfully British way.
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The syrinx, named for a Greek nymph, is the sound box in birds. It's located deep in the trachea as it splits to the lungs. This does a couple of things. One, it makes their songs resonate which is why little birds can produce big sounds. Second, it makes their songs complex because it has two sources of air--one from each lung.
But you're probably wondering where the nymph Syrinx comes in right? Well...once upon a time she was being stalked by Pan. Having been brought up right, she ran to the river and asked her fellow nymphs for help. Typical of Greek myths, (and in the category of "with friends like this...") they decided the best way to help her was to turn her into a bunch of reeds. Why do they do things like that? Then Pan came along and made the first Pan Pipes out of her. The birds that witnessed it obviously didn't like the way it went down since the whole thing seems to have stuck in their craw ever since. There you have it. :)
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Sometimes, with the best of intentions, people try to establish a bird species in a new place. Sometimes it works; that's called Introduction. Sometimes it doesn’t; that's called failure. But sometimes it works really, really well, and that's called a mess. That's what we have with these guys. True they were invited (introduced), but that didn't give them a license to make a nuisance of themselves. They've invaded. There are millions of them here. They aren't good for much and elbow out better looking birds, so we birders tend not to like them very much. Some of us get downright grumpy about it. There are states that have even tried to kill them. All of them. It didn't work.
I think we're stuck with them don't you? It's all Shakespeare's fault you know.
But more on that tomorrow. :)
What the heck is it? Hover over text or photo to find out.
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I was disappointed to find ventriculus [vin-TRICK-ya-lus] didn't mean a bird that could throw its voice. Instead it's just a fancy word for gizzard. Ventriculus, gizzard, whatever you want to call it, it's actually part of a bird's digestive system--kind of a second stomach--where it grinds up those pesky hard to digest things like clam shells. How? It rotates whatever is in there against whatever else is in there, kind of like polishing stones in a tumbler. To help the process, birds that can't leave the hard nuts or shellfish alone will sometimes snack on sand or gravel between meals. :)
And just for the record, meadowlarks and terns can throw their voices. :)
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First we had dabblers, then divers. Now come the Xtreme-divers. Some birds execute what is called a Plunge Dive. They rocket free style into the water from 30 or more feet. If they're lucky, they nab a fish. If not, they spear the shallow end of San Diego Bay. : )
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I knew the term "Life Bird" had to do with seeing a bird for the first time in your life, but always suspected there was more to it than that. I was wrong. :)
In response to a request, here is a photo of a duck dabbling (cute):
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Ok. Is this a male or female Western Meadowlark? Can't tell?
Actually it's easy.
Just pay close attention to see which one is laying eggs. Other than that? Good luck.
When talking of birds (which I usually am) Sexual Monomorphism (sort of the opposite of Sexual Dimorphism) is when both sexes look alike. Western Meadowlarks fit the bill. :)
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This field of study accurately measures the dimensions of creatures like birds--for example, they have found a hummingbird usually weighs a couple of grams. That's 0.0705479 oz. Don't tell the hummingbird though. These pugilistic little bully's still like to throw their weight around to protect their territory. A friend told me of one harrassing a hawk, dive bombing and buzzing it. Suddenly the hawk snapped and the little hummer was no more. Hubris.
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First things first: the hummingbird with the copper-red gorget was an Allen's Hummingbird The look alike hummer is a Rufous Hummingbird. I don't have a good enough photo to post yet, but trust me, they look almost identical. :) You can see a Rufous here :)
Iridescence: in the case of hummingbirds, the color and shimmer is not caused by pigment but by an incredibly complex system of specialized feathers that create (for want of a better term) a sort of transparent reflective bubble. The depth of this "bubble" exactly matches the wave length of a given color--in this case the beautiful copper-red. This causes the light to be reflected back twice--coming and going so to speak. The wavelengths of other colors, since they don't match the depth of the bubble, cancel themselves out. (And you thought you'd get something like shimmery and shiny.)
This explanation is way oversimplified, but I can't go into more detail here, because I don't really understand it. :)
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A patch of color at the throat of some birds, most famously hummingbirds, which is often iridescent. It has a French origin but we pronounce it "GORE-jit" because...well, because we're not French. :)
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Basically the gullet is the passage taken by food and drink through a bird's throat. In the case of the Great Blue Heron that trip down the gullet is not only long, but not always a slam dunk. They've been known to choke to death trying to get too large a fish down the hatch.
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Now if you'll excuse me an aside: :)
I don’t recall ever having been asked what I thought a bird was--I mean during the actual act of birding. Looking around the lagoon a bit Sunday morning though (apparently encouraged by my bird-nerd appearance) a man asked me if I could identify the big blue bird across the way. Indeed I could. :) As things often seem to go, it was none other than the star of this weekend's blog: a Great Blue Heron.
NEW! [Click here to see the ebird interactive location page for Great Blue Heron]
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A wooden object, usually a tree, where woodpeckers store food. Acorn woodpeckers have been known to store over 50,000 acorns in one granary. Wow! That's almost as many nuts as at a Jimmy Buffet concert. :)
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When referring to birds, Cooperative Breeding means something akin to It Takes a Village. Acorn Woodpeckers, one of the few species who practice it, raise their young as a group. One nest, one brood, 6 to 20 (or more) non-breeding adults feeding and caring for them. Although they've studied it, the behavior still puzzles scientists. Having helped raise four fledglings myself it seems obvious to me: those little woodpeckers must be holy terrors. : )
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Everyone knows a falcon is a kind of hawk. But did you know that "technically" the word applies only to the females in the family Falconidae. The male is called a tiercel or tercel [TER-sell] (yes spelled like the Toyota). Now you know. : )
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Mollusk is another way to say shellfish. This is a loosely defined group ranging from snails and clams to Squid and Octopi. It's so broad a group in fact mcwdn.org/mollusks describes it like this: "Shellfish are not all fish and many of them live on land. Not all of them have shells. They are not fish, although many of them live in the water."
:) What?
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A tendency for a bird (like the one below) to return every year to the same nest site or breeding territory, also known as "Site Tenacity."
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Rows of tiny feathers circling the eyes of many birds. Particularly noticeable in some--often called an eye ring.
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Bird-Nerd-Word of the day: Brood Parasite
A bird that lays its egg in the nests of other species. One of the most notable, the Brown-headed Cowbird, often chooses the American Goldfinch as target, but the hatchlings frequently don't survive. Most sources think this is because the Goldfinch diet consists almost exclusively of seeds.
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A patch of color on some ducks formed by a rectangular wing panel on the trailing edge.
Photo at: All About Birds
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This term refers to situations where the sexes of one species show radically different plumage.
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