Archive for Recent Sightings
Hoodarrion Crows
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These fine crows had found a great place to bathe in Vienna’s Stadpark. I felt a bit like one of Susannah’s elders spying on them, but there’s something unusual about these birds: I have no idea what they are.
And neither, in a sense, do they.
Lower Austria’s breeding “black” crow is the handsome gray Hooded Crow, much like this one facing off with a European Red Squirrel in the Schönbrunn gardens last week.
Come winter, though, all identification bets are off. Carrion Crow genes course through the blood of many, perhaps of most, of the thousands of non-Rook, non-Jackdaw Corvus roosting and feeding in the city, producing some handsome combinations of plumages.
Dark birds like this one might pass for a Carrion Crow on casual inspection, but the gray thighs and nape gave it away as a hybrid or intergrade; its exact heritage is likely very complex, full of the crosses and backcrosses typical of these birds in Mitteleuropa.
Many superficially Hooded Crows also showed clear signs of mixed ancestry, with extra black appearing most frequently on the mantle and lesser coverts.
With so many of these Hoodarrion Crows around, the suspicion is unavoidable that even visually “pure” birds aren’t. But–and this is the important point–who cares? We’re stuck enjoying what’s out there, and if it’s crows with fascinatingly muddy bloodlines, so much the better.
A Coot and a Quiz
Posted by: | CommentsI’ll admit to a fondness of all things coot, and Eurasian Coot is surely one of the most elegant of the genus.
They’re no less fractious than their American cousins, of course, but still, a beautiful sight when they’re floating, peaceful for the moment, on a lovely little park pond.
Here’s a good quiz: can you find half a dozen visual differences between the bird in the photo and American Coot? Bet you can.
Black Bird, Bright Bill
Posted by: | CommentsThere was a discussion not long ago on one of the mailing lists about a “mystery bird” in a European park: all black, with an orange bill.
There’s no doubt that the puzzle bird was a male European Blackbird, one of the commonest birds of many landscapes in western Europe. At the time, I put the description of the bill color down to poor observation. But this latest trip to Vienna made me reconsider.
This male Blackbird, photographed in Vienna’s Donaupark last week, had a bill nearly red–and the orbital ring was just as deep and vivid. Astonishingly, this was just one of at least four such birds I saw over the course of our stay; “normal” birds of this species have yellow bills and orbital rings, and I’d never seen anything this bright before. Interestingly, the tarsi and toes, as readily visible here, were the standard dull gray-horn color, obviously unaffected by whatever factor had resulted in the hyper-pigmentation of the remaining soft parts.
Michael suggested that the culprit might be an immodest consumption of ornamental honeysuckles, but so far as I know, that has been implicated only in plumage variation, and should (shouldn’t it?) have affected the tarsi as well. I thought instead of the bright-billed (and bright-footed) Laughing Gulls one encounters in the eastern US, and recalled, too, the two orange-billed European Starlings hanging out at Sandy Hook this winter.
Who has a real answer?
Boyce Thompson Sit This Thursday
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Join me and Darlene Smyth Thursday, January 12, for a birding sit in the beautiful desert oasis that is Boyce Thompson Arboretum!
Co-sponsored by BTA and Tucson Audubon, this event is free with paid admission ($9) to the park. It’s an ideal chance for casual or beginning birders and birders with limited mobility to see some of the many birds that take advantage of the arboretum’s varied vegetation and inviting water features.
It’s impossible to predict what we’ll see, but BTA has a well-deserved reputation as a rarity magnet. This winter has already seen at least one Rufous-backed Robin, and who knows what else will be waiting for our patient eyes?
Christmas Bird Count 2012
Posted by: | CommentsDave’s handy West Essex Birders site has its own taxonomy for the quality of a birding day, ranging from “outrageous” (positively so) to “dud.”
Our morning wasn’t exactly a dud, but I can’t say that we were subjected to all that many interruptions of a feathered kind, either, as Alison and I birded Verona and Hilltop Parks.
We did come up with 21 species, none of them rare or otherwise notable to anyone who can’t appreciate a Great Blue Heron standing motionless in the shade, a Red-tailed Hawk being blown overhead like a huge rusty leaf, or a curious White-throated Sparrow emerging, silent for once, from the brush to check us out.
We’ve had lots of good CBCs together now over the years. Wonder where next December will find us birding!
