The James Dean of Birds

Yet another corvid, the black-billed magpie (Pica hudsonia): haughty, scrappy, voracious and omnivorous. This bird simply doesn't care what you think. He'll sit in the middle of the street for dinner, and if he's feeling nervy, will just make you go around.


From some angles it looks like the black-billed magpies feathers are all black, but if they catch the sun the right way they look kind of blue-green.

Doodled from this Flickr photo.

Carpodacus mexicanus: House Finch

These guys live around here. They're not as flashy as the goldfinches or as, ahem, assertive as the sparrows.


They won't feed in our yard unless we put out black oil sunflower seeds. I don't know if they don't like nyjer thistle, or they don't like goldfinches, but they won't use the socks.

Now that we have a feeder right outside the back door filled with black oil sunflower, the house finches have been making appearances in droves.

Yay!

Doodled from this photo on quinet's Flickr photostream.

Not Ready for Primetime: Crested Tern

Sometimes I start a doodle, and for whatever reason I set it aside without making an effort to finish it.

Usually it's because I get so frustrated with the way it's turning out... sometimes, I start working on a doodle that gets so kerfuffled it makes the doodles in my meh category look like masterpieces.

And sometimes I go back to the doodle and it doesn't look all that bad. I'm still not going to finish it, but looking back on it I'm not quite sure why I stopped.


This is one of those doodles. I think I probably gave up because the arrangement of his wings was really hard to see and it was giving me fits.

Ah, well. Live and learn.

Cyanocitta stelleri: Steller's Jay

I love corvids. They're smart, brassy, obnoxious in a birdy way.


Steller's Jays are western birds, and along with their cousins the Blue Jays, they're the only North American jays with crests. These birds can be kissin' cousins; where their territories overlap, they may interbreed.

They feed on whatever they can find, including garbage. Apparently, jays have a dark side as well... they're not above robbing and killing.

Doodled from this photo on Wikipedia.

Love Happens?

I like romantic comedies... a lot. Unfortunately, Love Happens was neither romantic nor funny.

And there was some really awful treatment of a bird in it.

A cockatoo. Some variation on a sulphur-crested cockatoo. Not a lesser, like B. More like this one, a bigger cousin native to Australia (Cacatua galerita), photo from Wikipedia Commons:


In the movie, one of the main characters, in a "if you love something, set it free" moment, takes the big cockatoo to the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and lets the bird fly off.

There are so, so many things wrong with that scene, two of the big ones being:

1. Cockatoos aren't native to the Pacific Northwest; and


2. Most birds raised in captivity don't know how to survive in the wild.

In other words, it is likely that if that character's fit of weepy sentimentalism had been a real-life moment, it would have been a death sentence for the bird.

Look, I don't think movies have to be completely realistic to be good. But releasing a non-native pet parrot into a wilderness situation is beyond unrealistic... it's inappropriate. A pet parrot is raised to be imprinted to people (unless it was wild-caught, which is a completely different story). If you live with a pet parrot who was hatched into a human environment, as the human part of its flock it is your responsibility to provide for the bird in a human environment. If you don't want to do that, it's your responsibility to find someone who is willing.

(And yeah, I understand that there are people in the world who believe that no parrot should be a pet - all parrots should be allowed to be free in their native habitats. More power to them. My point here is that once that human-bird imprint has been made, it's really difficult to unmake.)

I was mortified by this scene, and even more mortified that the writers/producers/director apparently didn't question it as a plot point. Not just because it's an irresponsible act, but because a) it didn't do much to advance the story and b) it made some of the characters even less sympathetic. I turned off the DVD.

The parrot I live with, Bernini, was sitting with me on the couch. I took the DVD out of the player and told her that we would never make her fend for herself in the wild... even if she sometimes sorely tempts us with her bratty behavior.

Doodle B(ug)

Yesterday Dana and Lilo went for a walk while I stayed behind with B to watch the second game of the subway series (Yankees vs. Mets).

Actually, B doesn't watch TV. She sits on the back of the couch so she can see out the picture window. Watching the world go by seems to be far more entertaining to Bernini than Major League Baseball. Who knew? (Maybe she was disappointed that the Yankees weren't playing very well... I know I was.)


She sat in a patch of sunlight and relaxed for a few minutes... just long enough for me to do a muddy little drawing.

Why did the quail cross the road?

Huh... I have no idea... and I'm not sure the quail did either, because he was sitting in the middle of the road, not in much of a hurry to go anywhere, despite the fact that my car was barreling at him at, well, faster than he could run.


Good thing my brakes work, is all I have to say. (Well, that, and it's a good thing for me no one was following me at the time.)

California quail (Callipepla californica) doodled from this flickr photo.

--*--*--

Coincidentally, I've doodled a California quail before, in a post from late last October. There's been a little bit of improvement since then... I still have miles and miles to go before I can produce consistently decent work, but I've improved a fair amount in the last seven months of doodling.

Whee!

AP Video: Cleaning an Oiled Pelican

Also interesting:

Oiled Wildlife Care Network blog: The Definition of Oiled Wildlife. With birds it can be much more obvious than with other wildlife.

Anas platyrhynchos: Mallard

Several weeks ago, the local paper published a photo of a mallard hen nesting in the midst of a group of tulips outside an office building in downtown Spokane. The newspaper, in its infinite wisdom, decided to publish the address where the duck was nesting.

Sure enough, while mama mallard was on a constitutional, some less-than-upright individual vandalized the mama's nest.

She came back and laid a couple more eggs. As of this morning, she was still incubating.

The photographer has nicknamed mama mallard "Tulip." Interested parties have taken to leaving small cups of water and duck food for her.

Hopefully, Tulip's remaining eggs will hatch and the ducklings will safely make their way to the river a couple of blocks from her nest.


Mallard duckling doodle based on a photo by Flickr user Raj the Snapper.

Gallinago delicata: Wilson's Snipe

The Wilson's Snipe (Gallinago delicata), a shorebird that lives in marshes and bogs, lives around here year-round, though I have yet to seen one. They sink their bills into mud and water and feel around for food.

Take a look at the placement of the eye. I screw up lots when I'm drawing, but the odd placement of the snipe's eye, that's for real.


Interesting factoid (from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology): "The long bill of the Wilson's Snipe is flexible. The tips can be opened and closed with no movement at the base of the bill. Sensory pits at the tip of the bill allow the snipe to feel its prey deep in the mud."

A bird with "fish lips"... Cool!

Doodled from a photo on Wikipedia.

Vulnerable to the Slick: Snowy Plover

Also from the interactive graphic posted April 29 by The New York Times, the Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus). Also known as the Kentish Plover, the Snowy Plover is a small shorebird that nests on the ground, eats insects, and hangs out in the Gulf. (That's not the only place they're found, thankfully.)


Interesting factoid: the young are capable of leaving the nest almost immediately after hatching (after the down dries).

According to the Times graphic:

"Feeds on small invertebrates or oysters. At risk if oil comes ashore or affects their food sources."

Doodled from this photo on Wikipedia Commons.

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This little foray into spill-affected wildlife has given me the opportunity to do a lot of thinking recently about our relationship to oil. Our society is almost (if not completely) inextricably linked to petroleum, so I don't think it's realistic to declare that we should stop drilling, stop using petroleum products and byproducts, etc. You could go completely off the grid and still, if you shop at a grocery store, go to the doctor, buy Dawn, be involved with some entity that uses oil or a petroleum byproduct.

That said, because oil is a finite resource, coal requires enormous resources to harvest and the byproduct of both is a chemical compound that causes pollution, I think it's time for us to start looking at other sources of energy and using them as complements to existing sources. Americans are enormously creative and resourceful; it's time to harness some of that intellectual energy to come up with a more multi-faceted energy policy.

(Just to be clear, nuclear energy is off the table, as far as I'm concerned... at least until we can figure out a way to neutralize the waste instead of merely contain it. My grandpa worked for Hanford back in the day; I'm convinced there's a link between my family's past in the Tri-Cities and my wacky autoimmune system.)

So, does my belief that we need to seek out other sources of energy make me a hippie tree-hugger? Maybe. But arguing in favor of finding sources of energy that help preserve my own habitat makes all the sense in the world to me.

Vulnerable to the Slick: Reddish Egret

On 4/29, The New York Times posted an interactive feature, The Oil Spill: Wildlife at Risk.


The Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens) was on that list. From the interactive:

"A strictly coastal bird with a dwindling population. Has nowhere to go if their feeding and nesting grounds are fouled by oil."

The reddish egret comes in two morphs, the reddish (hence the name) and white.

Doodled from this photo.

Vulnerable to the Slick: Least Tern

Least Terns (Sternula antillarum) are nesting right now They nest right on the beach, so if oil is hits the beach they're on, they're not inclined to pick up and move. In other words, it's a bad time of year for an oil spill (which begs the question, is there a good time?).

According to this CBS News video, the Least Tern population along the Gulf Coast has declined significantly in recent times. A particularly ominous quote: "It (the spill) has the great potential for wiping out the entire population of the least tern along our coast area."

Bummer.

Tern doodled from a photo by Maggie Smith.

Vulnerable to the Slick: Loggerhead Sea Turtle

A couple of days ago I saw this link to a photo posted by the National Wildlife Federation. It was disturbing. It was a loggerhead sea turtle struggling in the oil slick.


The Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta caretta) spends most of its life at sea, coming ashore only to lay eggs. It is the largest of the hard-shelled turtles, and there are large concentrations in the Gulf of Mexico. As adults, they're quite large, weighing up to 350 lbs. As hatchlings, they're some of the most vulnerable young around; as they crawl from their nests to the ocean, they're dinner for all manner of creatures, from birds to wild boar to crabs. Only an estimated 1% of loggerhead hatchlings reach adulthood.

Loggerheads are so named because of their large heads and strong jaws.

This loggerhead (based on a this photo by Brian Gratwicke) is the first doodle on birdlydrawn in the category not a bird.

Lost & Found

I wonder who this belongs to...


I found it while on my morning constitutional. It looks to me like a primary feather from the right wing. I'm a novice at this sort of thing, so I could very well be wrong about that, but 1) the feather is more pointy at the tip (secondaries and tail feathers are rounder or more squared, right?), and 2) the leading edge is very narrow, as compared to the trailing edge.


So great. I think I can identify what kind of feather it is and from which part of the bird's body it came, but now what? It's about 11.5 cm long, and the red-orange color is more pronounced on the underside of the feather than the top side. Methinks more sleuthing is in order...

Interesting note: There's a sidebar in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Handbook of Bird Biology (known as the Big Book of Bird Biology around my house) featuring a woman named Roxie Laybourne who worked for the Smithsonian (and the FBI) for many years who could identify a bird's species, sex and relative age by a feather (or sometimes a feather fragment)! Here's a tidbit from the Smithsonian about some of her work.

Vulnerable to the Slick: Northern Gannet

The first oiled bird from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a juvenile Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus), who apparently swam right up to a clean-up boat. That bird is recovering in Louisiana.


The Northern Gannet is the largest member of the gannet family, a group of seabirds that spends its winters at sea. It's a reasonably large bird, at 2.5 - 3 feet long, weighing ~ 5 - 8 lbs. Juveniles are brown; adults are white with black on their wings and bluish bills and eyes. They feed by diving head first into groups of fish that gather near the surface of the water.

I read something yesterday that quoted a BP exec as saying that they might be able to prevent much of the spilled oil from reaching land. A good thing, no doubt. But for the critters that live in and around that water - birds, sea turtles, dolphins, fish - it's still a major problem. Even if the land we live on isn't impacted directly, the industries that support the Gulf economically will be, as will the ongoing health of the ecosystems in the region.

It sounds hippy-dippy when you say it, but apparently it's true: we're all connected, and in order to take care of ourselves we have to take care of the world around us.

Doodled from a photo on Wikimedia Commons.

Vulnerable to the Slick: Brown Pelican

The Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) is the state bird of Louisiana. They nest in the saltwater marshes of the Gulf Coast. They're breeding right now, which makes them more vulnerable than at other times of the year. The National Audubon Society says "Their relatively low reproductive rate means any disruption to their breeding cycle could have serious effects on the population."

The Brown Pelican was removed from the endangered species list last year.

Doodled from a photo by Kevin Cole.