northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's another Veery from last spring. Veeries are in a fairly good-sized family of birds, the thrushes . Some of the other thrushes look somewhat similar, some rendition of brown on top and whitish below: Hermit Thrush Swainson's Thrush Wood Thrush Other relatives are red-breasted, making them a little easier to identify: American Robin Eastern Bluebird  And then there are birds that sound like they're related to the thrushes, but are actually a type of warbler : Northern Waterthrush This is the complicated world of the birds. May 18, 2023 at Willowwood Arboretum Photo 292813063, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

You knew I needed to do a pun on the Veery's name, didn't you? These birds sound like they're saying "veer", hence their name. You can kind of interpret this as Thrush Week, since this is the 3rd thrush I'm featuring this week. And while the American Robin and Eastern Bluebird are distinctive and colorful enough that misidentifications are rare, the Veery, Swainson's Thrush , Wood Thrush , and Hermit Thrush are all mostly earth-toned above and white-with-some-speckles below. If you're not good with bird vocalizations and don't get a pretty good look at the last 4, identification can be difficult [1]. May 12, 2023 at Lord Stirling Park Photo 282422617, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] And don't let the names fool you. It's not a Wood Thrush just because you saw it in the woods, and it's not a Hermit Thrush just because it was alone when you saw it.

For Throwback Thursday, here's a bird from around 5 years ago. Back when I was working at Alcatel-Lucent/Nokia [1] I would walk through on-premises woods and meadows where I met this Wood Thrush 1 summer. This is another thrush that's fairly similar to ones like the Hermit Thrush and the Swainson's Thrush . They are considered 1 of the best singers among our song birds. They achieve this because they can sing 2 notes at the same time, and do it in harmony. While males of many birds perform song matching , where a bird sings a song and a rival tries to sing the same song, the more individualistic Wood Thrush will counter a rival's song with a distinct song of their own. Like some other birds, they also have a clever technique to raise as many children as possible in a breeding season. They'll have 1 brood, and before their young are ready to fend for themselves the female will go off and start another brood, leaving the male to provide for the 1st brood.  July 26,...

This Swainson's Thrush (perhaps due for a renaming) was perched on a fairly heavily lichened branch. Though there are a lot of thrushes around here, American Robins and Eastern Bluebirds are the ones I see the most (though I have met some Hermit Thrushes  on occasion). This is another bird that's not easily identified, mostly because there are other thrushes that look pretty similar. I think you're supposed to identify the Swainson's Thrush based on a little more light coloring around the eyes and a back that's slightly grayer than similar thrushes. In the foreseeable future, you won't see Swainson's Thrushes around because ... they're in line to have their name changed . The American Ornithological Society wants to rename all birds named after people. Though the subject came about due to some birds named after unsavory characters, it was also noticed that while names like Red-winged Blackbird tells you a lot about the bird's appearance [1], name...