Can you identify this bird? The photo was taken in Florida during the month of January. The answer will appear next week.
Category: Vertebrates
Photos Make Special Gifts
Today it’s time for my once-a-year photography promotion. Does someone on your gift list go wild for wildlife or bonkers for birds? Do they laud landscapes? Are they passionate about plants? How about giving them a photo expressing their special interest?
You can visit my online store at mountain-plover.com, view my line of blank greeting cards here, or contact me directly for prints of any of my photos that appear anywhere on this blog. (Note that prints not in stock will take a few extra days.)
December Quiz: Answer
To refresh your memory, here is the photo from December’s Bird Quiz. It was taken in Texas during the month of January. Don’t read any further if you want one last chance to identify this bird.
December’s Bird Quiz
Can you identify this bird? The photo was taken in Texas during the month of January. The answer will appear next week.
Continue to see the answers from last week’s British birding terms quiz…
Happy Thanksgiving
May you have much to be thankful for!
Do You Speak “Twitcher”?
Are you a birder? Do you speak English? I would have answered “yes” to both questions, until I saw some lists of British birding terms. Apparently, I speak American, not English. I’m familiar with “twitcher” as a seriously (some say extremely) competitive birder who keeps a life list (and probably several others as well). And I’ve heard the word “jizz” (which comes from GISS, as in General Impression of Size and Shape) used to describe a way of quickly identifying birds. However, I had no idea what most of these words meant, at least in the context of birdwatching.
Yes, you guessed it. I have a list of a ten British birding terms. How many can you correctly define? I should add, “without using the internet”—no cheating! And before the complaints start pouring in, yes, I’m aware that some of these terms are no longer in general usage, although my sources online didn’t mention which ones are obsolete.
Brrry Birrrds
As temperatures dipped into the negative numbers last week, I started wondering—how do wild birds, some no bigger than my fist, manage to stay warm in such frigid conditions? Of course, some bird avoid the problem by migrating, but plenty of birds winter right here in Colorado. I already knew that birds eat more when the weather is cold; my need to constantly refill the bird feeder is proof enough. The suet feeder, with all that high-calorie fat, empties even faster. But could a higher metabolism be enough to carry such seemingly fragile puffballs through a Colorado winter? I decided to find out.
November Quiz: Answer
To refresh your memory, here is the photo from November’s Bird Quiz. It was taken in Colorado during the month of January. Don’t read any further if you want one last chance to identify this bird.
November’s Bird Quiz
Can you identify this bird? The photo was taken in Colorado during the month of January. The answer will appear next week.
A Murder of Crows
I know a lot of people don’t like crows. There’s something sort of spooky about them. Maybe that’s because they’re black, and black birds seem to encourage superstition. Why else would a flock of crows be called a “murder”? It’s true that they’re not as colorful as most songbirds, and they do make pigs of themselves at feeders, but crows are fascinating. With Halloween fast approaching, this seems an appropriate time to take another look at these very common and highly intelligent birds.
You can learn all about the taxonomy and biology of crows from a variety of websites. I recommend The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Geographic, and Audubon for starters. It’s interesting information, but crows are more than a list of facts—much more. They are now considered one of the smartest animals in the world! Want proof?
Mountain Plover 