northeast-flora-and-fauna

In contrast to the (frequently vividly) blue bluets I posted Wednesday and Thursday (and earlier ), I also saw a pair of  Orange Bluets  in tandem last spring. You might be thinking: "If it's orange, it should be called something else, like an oranget or something". Let me defend the name a bit: The bluets are their closest relatives, and while it's a little unfortunate that the genus was named after a trait this particular species doesn't have as adults, there are more egregious naming problems out there [1]. As you might have picked up on from the preceding bullet item, immature Orange Bluets actually are a pale blue, though they outgrow it by the time they're ready to breed. In some other species of bluet, only the males are blue. The Orange Bluet isn't the only bluet where the males are not blue either. In my area the Vesper Bluet (yellow) and the Scarlet Bluet (see if you can guess their color) are the other non-blue bluets. I suspect this partic...

This is our area's most common native dove/pigeon [1], the Mourning Dove , though it has a tenuous claim to the Turtle Dove (famous from The Twelve Days of Christmas song) name. While the true Turtle Dove is a somewhat distant relative that lives in Britain, the Mourning Dove has sometimes been referred to as either a Turtle Dove or a Carolina Turtledove. This suggests that it wouldn't be all that difficult to see some of the birds of song on a carefully planned walk: Swans aren't common around here, though they're easier to find in other areas of the country. Geese are all over the place. Calling birds is pretty vague; if you awoke to birds singing, you could probably check them off your list. French hens aren't really a species or breed, so I'd argue any live chickens you run across are good enough to cross them off your list. (Of course, we don't have wild chickens in New Jersey so you'd probably need to find someone who raises them.) If you conside...

For Throwback Thursday - and Thanksgiving - I figured I should show a couple of the wild cousins of our Domestic Turkeys , Eastern Wild Turkeys . These 2 were selected because the pictures came out well. The 1st picture is 1 of the few pictures I've gotten of an male turkey (a tom) [1]. The prominent snood above his beak, the bright red wattle under the beak, the nearly-as-red caruncles next to the wattle, and the vicious-looking spur seen on the back of the forward leg all indicate this to be a male. (Males also have a beard, but I think the angle is wrong to see that.) June 4, 2017 at Duke Farms Photo 8423439, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) A little more recently I saw this female turkey (hen). Though females do have snoods (you can see it if you look closely), wattles (you should be able to see it, though it's not as prominent as the 1 on the male above), caruncles (hard to see here, maybe because of the lighting), and a leg spur (I'm told it's th...

Last March I met a Mourning Dove sitting on the ground and who didn't fly away when I approached. As often happens, I can't say I know exactly what was going on. The bird didn't appear to be hurt, another Mourning Dove was walking around, perhaps foraging, but this 1 was just sitting there. I think we can rule out that the bird was incubating eggs. Although there are differences of opinion on whether they nest on the ground ( Audubon says yes , Wild Bird Watching says no ) their nests aren't supposed to be so small that the bird would entirely cover it. Perhaps I interrupted a courtship ritual, and the birds hoped I'd have the social grace to awkwardly depart? Maybe that's the choicest location to sit in the grass by some dove reasoning?  March 22, 2023 at the Raritan River Greenway Photo 269153514, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Grey Heron Here's a Grey Heron I met in the spring of 2022. Some people claim that this is a species that's a rare visitor from Europe, but they're all over central New Jersey. I think I saw 4-5 of them just this week!* April 20, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 191969839, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

For Throwback Thursday, here's a bird that's probably associated with our cities more than woods, meadows or wetlands. It's a Rock Pigeon  (AKA Rock Dove); I've mentioned before that there's no clear taxonomic difference between doves and pigeons .  Technically calling them Rock Doves is slightly old-fashioned; that used to be the common name for the birds (in English) before the American Ornithologists' Union and the British Ornithologists' Union decided to switch to Rock Pigeon for complicated reasons. (The scientific name didn't change so there wasn't a need to get worldwide support for the name change. I don't know if English speakers in Canada, Australia, India, etc. had any input though.) I suppose to be more precise, I could have referred to the bird as a Feral Pigeon , which is a wild version of the Domestic Pigeon , which is in turn a tame version of the Rock Pigeon. (The Feral Pigeon and the Domestic Pigeon together comprise a subspeci...

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)

Although it's easy to find Mourning Doves here in NJ, a bird feeder really can draw them close for a good look at them. The feeder got in the way a little, but this is good enough to get a good sense of what these birds look like. Mourning Doves are supposed to "coo", but their vocalization also sounds like a "whoo" - the person convinced he hears but can't find an owl in broad daylight may be hearing a Mourning Dove instead. Doves/pigeons - there's not a heck of a lot of difference between doves and pigeons - feed their offspring crop milk , a regurgitated substance that provides similar nutrition as mammalian milk. Normally these birds like to feed off the ground, though flat hanging platforms like some bird feeders will also suffice. July 18, 2021 at Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary Photo 148188219, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

While yesterday's Mourning Dove are rare beneficiaries of the bird food I've left out for the Dark-eyed Juncos , much more frequent beneficiaries are the House Sparrows . As one of the most successful invasive bird species in North America (the European Starling is the other one), House Sparrows are less popular with birders, naturalists, and ecologists than almost any bird we see. This actually extends to the law; while harming most birds is illegal (with some regulated exceptions for game birds), these guys aren't protected by federal law. (Local animal cruelty laws could still apply though.) These guys are Old World sparrows , and are thus not particularly closely related to virtually all the other sparrows you see; almost all the other sparrows you see are New World sparrows . (New World sparrows are actually more closely related to Old World Buntings than Old World Sparrows. Such is the confusing world of taxonomy.) March 2021 at Finderne

For the past couple (few?) winters I've been scattering food on the ground to feed the Dark-eyed Juncos that winter near me. This year a couple other birds have taken notice; here's a Mourning Dove that dropped by for a bite to eat. I'm a little surprised 1) That I haven't seen these birds come by before, and 2) That even now that they've discovered the food source, they still don't come by all that often. Certainly Mourning Doves are plentiful in the area, and they are happy to feed off the ground. One thing you will notice if they're out there with the Dark-eyed Juncos is that while we think of both of these as "little birds", the Mourning Dove is a much larger bird. While most of the birds we see around are passerines (e.g. crows/jays, robins, sparrows, warblers), the doves/pigeons are not. They are columbids , and are more distantly related to most of the bird feeder birds. March 2021 at Finderne