northeast-flora-and-fauna

Before leaving shorebirds for a while, here's another of our Lesser Yellowlegs I saw among 5-6 spring migration shorebirds (most of whom were Solitary Sandpipers ). I'm a little surprised I got an ID on this 1 since it's in deep enough water that it's not possible to evaluate how "leggy" it is, an important differentiator between Lesser Yellowlegs and Solitary Sandpipers. I suspect that the ID was due to: Solitary Sandpipers usually have duller yellow legs than the Lesser Yellowlegs. Solitary Sandpipers generally have a more prominent white eye ring than the Lesser Yellowlegs. In this case we had to rely on subtly subjective clues to get an identification. They are described by All About Birds as having a size between an American Robin and an American Crow . Considering I spot them pretty easily, I thought I'd find that they were much closer in size to crows than robins, but instead they're only slightly longer and heavier than our robins, and m...

Here's a bird I see moderately often, hear more often than that, but of which rarely get an identifiable picture, a Common Raven . This is partly because they don't photograph particularly well; in some light I don't end up with much more than a silhouette. And it's partly because the differences between our ravens and our crows ( American or Fish ) are fairly subtle. Social media has a lot of pictures of crows where the photographer was hoping to have gotten a raven picture. (Sometimes these lead to heated crow-versus-raven debates, similar to those of other look-alike birds .) The overall size, relative beak size, and a hairier beak are the best clues in telling ravens from crows. If they were side-by-side, size alone would distinguish the 2 pretty easily, but usually crows perceive ravens as threats and will try and drive them away. When I've seen them together the crows are either driving a raven away in an aerial battle or they're scolding the raven vocif...

The picture of an American Goldfinch reminds me just how light many of our birds are. This little fella is able to perch on what looks like a sturdier-than-usual blade of grass. These birds typically weigh less than half an ounce, and only a little more than a Kennedy half dollar (the vaguely common US coin that's closest to them in weight). By way of contrast, Mourning Doves weigh 9 times more than goldfinches, and American Crows weigh around 35 times more. (This is one small bird.) As birds that fly, there are obvious benefits to being light. The heavier you are the more calories it takes to get you off the ground. As one of our smallest commonly seen birds, our goldfinches probably derive some foraging benefits too. They can eat seeds out of thistles and coneflowers while perching on these flowers. June 12, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 209947165, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)