birds
grrlscientist | December 3, 2008tags: Crested Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Crested Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Rick Wright [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Millennia of selective breeding have produced domestic ducks that are meaty, or manageable, or, as in the case of this quiz bird, just goofy.
Mallards have been domesticated for thousands of years, and virtually all…
grrlscientist | December 2, 2008tags: Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Pheucticus ludovicianus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Pheucticus ludovicianus, photographed at Sabine Woods and Sabine Pass area, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 28 April 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/250s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Every birder has a "trigger" bird, and most of us have…
grrlscientist | December 2, 2008tags: Snowball, dancing cockatoo, behavior, streaming video
This streaming video is a clip from a longer DVD, Snowball's Snowy Christmas DVD, which is now available for Christmas gift giving. Children love Snowball and this DVD features the sulfur-crested cockatoo, Snowball, dancing to Christmas carols.
grrlscientist | December 1, 2008tags: Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Ghost Bird, movie trailer, streaming video
This streaming video is a clip from an upcoming movie called Ghost Bird. This film is a documentary about the controversial rediscovery of North America's largest woodpecker species, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which went extinct early last century [3:29].
To learn more about the film, visit the Ghost Bird website. You might also be interested in reading this news article.
grrlscientist | December 1, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Whimbrel, Numenius phaeopus at Bolivar Flats, Texas.
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 2 July 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/2000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Christmas Bird Count News
The Annual Christmas Bird Counts are rapidly approaching, so I am publishing links to all of the counts here; who to contact, and where and when they are being held, so if you have a link to a Christmas Bird Count for your state, please let me know so I can include it in the list:
Alabama (Thanks…
grrlscientist | December 1, 2008tags: Male Hooded Merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Male Hooded Merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Rick Wright.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
The challenge of this mystery bird is less to diagnose its identity than to figure out how you identified this fine male Hooded Merganser. The responses from readers point to two very different modes of…
revere | December 1, 2008The common cold is probably common because a lot of different viruses cause similar symptoms. We usually treat it symptomatically or just endure it. We rarely expend much time, effort or money identifying which virus caused it. As as a result we undoubtedly haven't identified all the viruses that can make us miserable in the inimitable way we identify as a "head cold." When we entered the 21st century, some 8 years ago, there were a lot of stories about what the future might bring and I was interviewed by a well known medical TV reporter (Dr. Timothy Johnson) about what I thought would happen…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2008tags: Baltimore Oriole, Icterus galbula, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird Baltimore Oriole, Icterus galbula, photographed at the east end of Galveston Island, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 16 April 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/320s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
The computer screen and middle-aged eyes give an oddly warm cast to what I know…
edyong | November 29, 2008
As Charles Darwin learned several centuries ago, islands are havens for evolution. Newcomers to these isolated worlds find themselves unshackled from the predators that dogged them on the mainland. They celebrate their freedom by diversifying into a great variety of species. But predators still have ways of tracking them down, and following the footsteps of sailors is one of them. By killing adults and eating eggs, introduced predators such as rats, cats and stoats are responsible for nine in ten of the bird extinctions since 1600.
Now, conservation agencies are getting serious about…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2008tags: Blue Grosbeak, Passerina caerulea, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Blue Grosbeak, Passerina caerulea, photographed at High Island, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 11 April 2007 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/500s f/8.0 at 500.0mm iso800.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
A blue bird. With a short, broad tail. And a huge bill. This is a male Blue Grosbeak in all his glory.…
revere | November 29, 2008Genetically modified crops is not a special interest of mine, which is a good thing because once you get into that controversy you are like the worker who gets his sleeve caught in the machine: before long you are dragged into the gears and badly mauled. I'm not reflexively against it. I recognize that what GM advocates have been saying has more than a grain of truth: we've been engaged in genetic engineering of crops since agriculture was domesticated. Modern genetic techniques have amplified that ability by orders of magnitude, but the result is the same. We are purposely altering the…
grrlscientist | November 28, 2008tags: American Avocet chick, Recurvirostra americana, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] American Avocet chick, Recurvirostra americana, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 2007 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2007:06:01 18:52:32
Exposure Time: 1/159
F-Number: 7.10
ISO: 200
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
This bird's downy plumage may not identify it to species, but it leaves no doubt that we are dealing…
revere | November 27, 2008It's Thanksgiving Holiday in the US. For many Americans a time to dine on traditional foods with family and friends; for a significant number of Americans a difficult time of loneliness or family tension; for the original Americans, a time to reflect on how European occupiers and invaders took your land and your way of life. We are fortunate enough to be in the first group but we never forget how fortunate we are. If you aren't American (and most of the world isn't) it's just another work day or another day of trying to make it to the next day.
Whatever, it's not a heavy day for blog traffic…
grrlscientist | November 27, 2008tags: Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, photographed at 40 Acre Lake, Brazos Bend State Park, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 28 February 2007 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/50s f/8.0 at 500.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
The huge bill, long crest, and lavish tail put us onto the…
revere | November 27, 2008The other day we wrote a post about the reduction in genetic diversity among commercial chicken breeds that attracted a surprising amount of informed comment (surprising to us, anyway; I think it shows more about the general knowledge of a city boy like me than anything else). So while we were on the subject of chickens (as we are so often because we write a lot about avian influenza) I thought I'd post up this remarkable YouTube video illustrating chicken head control. First a little background from the point of view of a human.
Humans also have remarkable abilities when it comes to head and…
grrlscientist | November 25, 2008tags: Penelope Guan, Penelope species, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Unidentified Penelope Guan, Penelope species, photographed in South America [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Indonesian Parrot Project [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
The cracids -- chachalacas, guans, and curassows -- are a large family of spectacular gallinaceous birds found in tropical America; large and meaty, they are often under intense hunting…
grrlscientist | November 24, 2008tags: Painted Bunting, Passerina ciris, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Painted Bunting, Passerina ciris, photographed at Pelican Island, A&M Property, Galveston, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 19 April 2007 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/320s f/8.0 at 500.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
There are very few bright green birds north of Mexico. This is a fairly…