Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Pale Male, Pale Beauty, Two Races of Juncos, and Screech Owls-Oscar and Olivia.


Photo courtesy of palemale.com

Pale Male and Pale Beauty sitting on Linda. Pale Beauty is beginning to look a little chunkier by the day. She's beginning to look a little eggnant. Multiple copulations per day continue.

I looked out the door and saw this little guy. He'd not been out there before but migration is heating up.

Peck, peck. He looked kind of familiar...

but he insisted on staying beyond the picnic table and I couldn't quite bring the name to mind.

In the meantime a Downy Woodpecker was going to the sunflower seed feeder and flying off with a seed in his beak.

He'd then poke the seed into a crevice of the bark,

Then he'd lean back, I think to make sure it was wedged securely and wasn't going to topple out. Then Downy would fly back and get another one to cache.

The little black headed guy was still there and then one of the over-wintering Juncos hopped by, they both startled and there was the distinctive flick of the black and white tail and the undulating flight in both their flights. The stranger is a Dark-eyed (Oregon) Junco, a vagrant in the East. Whereas my regular over-wintering Juncos are Dark-eyed (Slate-colored) Juncos, both are Junco hyemalis. They were originally considered different species.

Finally a first look at scrunchy faced gray phase Olivia's "ear".

A Screech Owl update from Jane of Georgia
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Olivia and Oscar were out at weird times today. The first picture is Olivia, definitely grayer than Oscar, taken just a few minutes ago (around 5:40pm, at least an hour earlier than I normally see her at the door).

The second picture is Oscar, definitely redder. He started showing himself around 2pm this afternoon.

It just doesn’t get old!

Jane


D.B.

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