June 8th, 2008 by elanus
tinyang and vanilla teamed up to snap five photos this morning of a bird that I’m scratching my head over. Check them out:
The shots are by tinyang, vanilla, vanilla, tinyang, and vanilla, respectively. According to txbird in chat, some users have suggested Varied Bunting, but I’m having a hard time reconciling those images with that bird, at least based on the field guide, which is the only place I’ve ever seen one. If I had to put money on something, I’d call it a drab male House Finch, but I’m not positive about it.
Varied Bunting doesn’t appear at all in the Welder checklist, and House Finch only as “rare”, and only in winter, so I’m really not sure what to think. Anyone else have any ideas?
Update: As discussed in the comments, I’m feeling more inclined to call this one a male House Finch. It’s a little unusual-looking, at least compared to the House Finches I’m used to seeing, but I’m pretty comfortable at this point saying that that’s what it is.
Later update: rafa alerted me to the fact that one of these images (the second from the bottom, by tinyang) has now been officially classified as a House Finch. Congratulations, tinyang!
Posted in The Birds, Records and Rarities, Identification Challenges | 5 Comments »
June 3rd, 2008 by elanus
Posted in Favorite Shots, The Birds, Records and Rarities | Comments Off
May 30th, 2008 by elanus
It’s not a great shot, but boy, is it a great shot. 
Look at what rafa snapped a photo of at 11:25 this morning:
We previously had a couple of shots of a female Painted Bunting, so it isn’t a new ID, but I’ve been hoping we could get a shot of a male. It’s a bird I’ve never seen in real life, and always wanted to.
So, that bare-sticks tree beyond the pond is the happening place. I had a couple of bad shots I threw away of the Ladder-backed Woodpecker in there today (he was moving too fast for me).
Congratulations, rafa! We’re all jealous.
Posted in Favorite Shots, The Birds, Records and Rarities | No Comments »
May 30th, 2008 by elanus
Remember the pregnant white-tail doe we’ve been watching since the camera went live? I don’t think she’s pregnant any more. Check out these shots taken this morning by birdbrain and rafa:
birdbrain wrote in the comment accompanying that first photo:
Bambi happily exploring the area (no parents visible) … running and hiding in tall clumps of grass from time to time…. A natural instinct for survival. Absolutely amazing!!
Posted in Favorite Shots, Mammals, Non-bird Shots | 1 Comment »
May 30th, 2008 by elanus
Another new species today, and again, rafa and lal were in the thick of the action. First-shot honors (and kudos for some good camera driving, reportedly) went to rafa:
My favorite close-up was this shot by lal:
I love how we really get to see the field marks. No doubt about it: Ladder-backed Woodpecker all the way. Great job!
Posted in Favorite Shots, The Birds, Records and Rarities | No Comments »
May 30th, 2008 by elanus
I’ve had no time to birdcam the last few days, but you guys have picked up some awesome new birds, including Tufted Titmice (or is it titmouses?) that were first photographed early Tuesday morning, and which have since been seen at least two more times (though not by me, darn it).
The first shot went to lal:
rafa got this shot showing two birds at once, though I understand there were actually three individuals present. They moved around so fast they were hard to get shots of.
Finally, robin54 got this nice close-up of that characteristic titmouse/chickadee behavior of holding a seed in one’s feet in order to do some concentrated pecking:
Congratulations on getting cute shots of some exceedingly cute birds!
Posted in Favorite Shots, The Birds, Records and Rarities | 1 Comment »
May 24th, 2008 by elanus
After Red-winged Blackbirds, Brown-headed Cowbirds are probably the most commonly seen birds in the birdcam; they’re pretty much always around. As with other icterids, the males and females are quite different. Males are black with a distinctive brown head, while females, which are similar in shape but just a tad smaller, are tan with few distinct markings.
I took these three cowbird shots this morning because I thought it was interesting how the male toward the top of the frame was posturing; he did this several times. (The male at the bottom of the frame shows a more-typical cowbird posture.) The female, too, seemed to be acting unusual, crouching down the way you see in these images. I wondered if this was courtship behavior, but no actual mating took place that I noticed.
Brown-headed Cowbirds are nest parasites, as most readers of this blog probably already know. They don’t build a nest or rear their own young; instead, the female lays an egg in the nest of some other perching bird. I’ve read that as it matures, the young cowbird will often grow larger and faster than its nestmates, pushing them out of the nest to monopolize the attentions of its foster parents.
The Wikipedia article on the Brown-headed Cowbird currently includes the following photo, taken by Frankie Rose, showing a Brown-headed Cowbird egg in the nest of an Eastern Phoebe:
According to that Wikipedia article, the cowbird’s nest parasitism evolved as an adaptation to the bird’s traditional lifestyle following the North American bison herds. With the arrival of European settlers and their livestock, they found themselves admirably adapted to the new conditions, and have continued quite successfully (in the eyes of some, a little too successfully) to this day.
Posted in The Birds, Interesting Behavior, Know Your Icterids | 1 Comment »
May 24th, 2008 by elanus
Phantoms no more, a pair of Northern Bobwhites were photographed by users peteinkeyworth and birdbrain early this morning. Here’s the first shot, taken by peteinkeyworth at 6:10 a.m.:
That’s the male, with the more contrast-y head markings, on the lower right, and the female on the left.
Here’s the tightest closeup that they got, taken by birdbrain at 6:19:
Congratulations on getting some great shots of the game’s newest bird!
Posted in Favorite Shots, Records and Rarities | No Comments »
May 23rd, 2008 by elanus
A bird that’s new for me with CONE Welder is the Bronzed Cowbird. Like the other icterids in the system, the males and females look somewhat different, though with the Bronzed Cowbird the difference isn’t as obvious as it is with the other icterids we’ve been seeing.
Here’s a shot of a male that I took today:
And here’s a shot of a female I took a few minutes later:
The female has the same pattern of black on the head and back, with lighter plumage below that, though the female is more drab than the male.
As with many icterids, eye color is an important field mark for the Bronzed Cowbird. Both sexes have a really striking reddish iris; birdbrain got this great shot of a male glaring at the camera on May 16:
Something that confused me the first few times I saw these birds was that they don’t always show the puffed-up head and shoulders that Sibley shows in his illustration (he calls it a “ruff”). They do show it a lot, though, as in that photo of the male at the top of this post, and in this cool shot taken by txbird on May 10:
Finally, here’s a good comparison shot I got back on May 4. I think this shows a male Bronzed Cowbird in the middle, with a female on either side. (I’m not sure about the identity of the other two birds in the background.) Besides the difference in their markings, you can see that there’s a bit of a size difference between the sexes, too; the male is a little larger.
Posted in Favorite Shots, The Birds, Know Your Icterids | No Comments »
