Color And Song
April 29th, 2009
Mud Lake is overflowing with color and song. First-of-spring sightings:
- Great Crested Flycatcher
- Gray Catbird
- Warbling Vireo
- More Ruby-Crowned Kinglets than you can shake a stick at.
Ruby-Crowned Kinglets are a tiny bit less hyperactive than Golden-Crowned Kinglets. The male's ruby crown is usually hidden. But when he gets excited (due to a territorial dispute with another kinglet, for instance), his crown feathers ruffle and the red appears, usually in a "blink and you miss it" moment. When I get a focus on one of them, I rapid-fire and hope I manage to capture that moment.
A Brown Thrasher in the early morning light. Along with mockingbirds and catbirds, thrashers are mimids. Their songs are intricate and variable, and they are capable of imitating other birds. Thrashers tend to be elusive when they're not singing.
Like other flycatchers, the Great Crested Flycatcher will perch in the open, sally up to snatch the occasional flying insect, then drop back down. This bird is known for the odd habit of including a shed snakeskin in its nest lining. Naturalists theorize that it's a ruse for warding off predators.
An ungodly racket of angry crows announced this final bird, a juvenile (first-year) female Cooper's Hawk. They chased her out of the woods and she ended up perching practically right above me, looking nervously back at the mob.
According to another birder who got there before me, she's mated to a mature male and they're likely planning to nest at Mud Lake. He also claimed that, when it all started, she was attempting to hunt one of the crows! I hadn't heard of a Cooper's Hawk (or indeed any hawk) being quite that ambitious before. Presumably she's learned her lesson.
April 29th, 2009
Mud Lake is overflowing with color and song. First-of-spring sightings:
- Great Crested Flycatcher
- Gray Catbird
- Warbling Vireo
- More Ruby-Crowned Kinglets than you can shake a stick at.
Ruby-Crowned Kinglets are a tiny bit less hyperactive than Golden-Crowned Kinglets. The male's ruby crown is usually hidden. But when he gets excited (due to a territorial dispute with another kinglet, for instance), his crown feathers ruffle and the red appears, usually in a "blink and you miss it" moment. When I get a focus on one of them, I rapid-fire and hope I manage to capture that moment.
A Brown Thrasher in the early morning light. Along with mockingbirds and catbirds, thrashers are mimids. Their songs are intricate and variable, and they are capable of imitating other birds. Thrashers tend to be elusive when they're not singing.
Like other flycatchers, the Great Crested Flycatcher will perch in the open, sally up to snatch the occasional flying insect, then drop back down. This bird is known for the odd habit of including a shed snakeskin in its nest lining. Naturalists theorize that it's a ruse for warding off predators.
An ungodly racket of angry crows announced this final bird, a juvenile (first-year) female Cooper's Hawk. They chased her out of the woods and she ended up perching practically right above me, looking nervously back at the mob.
According to another birder who got there before me, she's mated to a mature male and they're likely planning to nest at Mud Lake. He also claimed that, when it all started, she was attempting to hunt one of the crows! I hadn't heard of a Cooper's Hawk (or indeed any hawk) being quite that ambitious before. Presumably she's learned her lesson.
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