Birds of Alberta 4

This is such a bad photo, but perhaps the sharpest one that I've taken. How I dislike branches - hey, Phil, here's a challenge for you, LOL! However, I am uploading this, in the hope that I will one day get a much better shot of one of these pretty little Yellow-rumped Warblers. This little one was flitting around at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary.

This is the mother of the two Great Horned Owl owlets in a local park. When I arrived yesterday afternoon, she was across the road from the nest, but keeping a careful eye on a hawk that was circling overhead.

We came across this part of a wing belonging to a Mountain Bluebird when we were on a walk in a local park. "The colors in the feathers of a bird are formed in two different ways, from either pigments or from light refraction caused by the structure of the feather. The blues seen in the feathers of Bluebirds are structural colors - there is no blue pigment. First, observe the feather in normal lighting conditions and you will see the expected blue color. Next, try back-lighting the feather. When light is transmitted through the feather it will look brown. The blues are lost because the light is no longer being reflected back and the brown shows up because of the melanin in the feathers." From www.birds.cornell .

This photo does not do justice to the thick clouds of bugs we had to endure closer to the water at Frank Lake today! This particular Yellow-headed Blackbird was a more orange-yellow than usual.

We had read the warning on the Internet about this Killdeer's nest, built right in the MIDDLE of a gravel road leading down to Frank Lake, south of the city. The gate was closed when we arrived, so we walked the length of road and so were able to find this nest. It would have been SO easy to have missed it, as it was barely noticeable. Built on the gravel road, it was just a slight depression, lined with small bits of gravel but no other lining. The three beautiful eggs looked like stones : ). We saw both adults nearby, but the nest was left unprotected. Note later: we found out that someone had photographed the nest the day before we did, and there were four eggs : (( "Killdeer nest on open ground, often on gravel. They may use a slight depression in the gravel to hold the eggs, but they don't line it at all, or line it only with a few stones. Since there is no structure to stand out from its surroundings, a killdeer nest blends marvelously into the background. Furthermore, the speckled eggs themselves look like stones. Killdeer hatchlings are precocial birds like many other waders. Birds which hatch blind, naked, and helpless are called altricial. Most birds are born altricial and utterly rely on their parents to bring them food. Precocial birds stay in the egg twice as long as altricial birds, so they have more time to develop. A one-day-old Killdeer chick is actually two weeks more developed than a one-day-old American Robin nestling. Although adult Robins and Killdeer are the same size, a Killdeer's egg is twice the size of a Robin's. There is more nourishment in the Killdeer egg, to sustain the embryo for its longer time in the shell." From Wikipedia.

A friend very kindly invited me to go down south of the city to Frank Lake today. We spent about eight hours at various places around this huge lake and also stopping at a few sloughs to search for shorebirds. This American Avocet was closer to the road than others we had seen earlier. They are such beautiful, elegant birds! The female's bill is more upturned and shorter than the male's.

This is NOT one of "my" owlets, though a friend has seen one of "mine" out of the nest and on a nearby branch. Today, when I went down to check, I found both owlets back in the nest, LOL. The owl in this photo was seen yesterday on a drive with a friend to the Frank Lake area. A second owlet could be seen up on the nest. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this gorgeous ball of fluff!

A friend and I had a most enjoyable day down at Frank Lake, south east of Calgary, on Monday. We had fun trying to catch these Forster's Terns for an in-flight shot. I managed to get several, but none are very sharp (i.e. don't look at it in large size, LOL). When they hover, I love the feather patterns in the wings and tail. Very elegant birds.

Northern Shovelers are common in Alberta from March to September. Photographed this male south east of Calgary, in the Frank Lake area. "This species is unmistakable in the northern hemisphere due to its large spatulate bill. The breeding male has a green head, white breast and chestnut belly and flanks. In flight, pale blue forewing feathers are revealed, separated from the green speculum by a white border. The females are light brown, with plumage much like a female Mallard, but their long broad bill easily identifies them. The female's forewing is grey. In non-breeding (eclipse) plumage, the drake looks more like the female. It is a bird of open wetlands, such as wet grassland or marshes with some emergent vegetation, and feeds by dabbling for plant food, often by swinging its bill from side to side and using the bill to strain food from the water. This bird also eats mollusks and insects in the nesting season. The nest is a shallow depression on the ground, lined with plant material and down, usually close to water." From indopedia.org.