Molt is the process of feather replacement. All birds do it; they have to grow new feathers once or twice a year to stay warm, dry, and airborne, and in many cases they grow differently colored feathers at different seasons to match their surroundings or to impress others of their species. Among the small songbirds, […]
The annual plumage cycle of a male American Goldfinch Read More »
The still-unidentified Elaenia, found by Ethan and Aaron Gyllenhaal in Illinois, has provided one of the most exciting and interesting bird identification challenges in recent years. It is either a first North American record of Small-billed Elaenia, or second North American record of White-crested (or third if an earlier record from Florida was White-crested). Both
In praise of mystery Read More »
I was musing on the value of learning bird topography this morning, wondering why it is so important to know the greater coverts and supercilium and all the rest. The easy answer is that it gives us a framework to describe the color patterns of birds, but I think there’s even more to it than
Bird Topography – How it helps identify birds Read More »
Update: For future visitors I should explain that I posted this as an April Fool’s Joke. This video converts the voice descriptions from the Sibley Guide to Birds from text-to-speech, and the results are pretty funny, and maybe even a little bit educational. Today I’m very pleased to announce my latest major project. It’s a bird
Announcing my new video guide to bird songs! Read More »
A pale and grayish female bluebird found in North Carolina recently (March 2012) provided a very interesting identification challenge. The plumage colors were a good match for a typical female Mountain Bluebird, and that is how it was first identified. North Carolina has only one previous report of Mountain Bluebird, so this bird received a
Identification of female bluebirds by wing structure Read More »
The feathers along the side of the lower jaw have a very confusing history of terminology. They’ve been called the malar stripe (in many early and mid 20th century bird books), the submoustachial ((Because this was a British proposal, the spelling is British “moustache” rather than the American “mustache”, and American bird guides have continued
What is the submoustachial? Read More »
The feathers that grow on the sides of the head above the eyes of a bird are called the supercilium, and when they contrast in color with the adjacent feathers we call that an eyebrow stripe. There’s lots of variation in the shape of the eyebrow stripe, and in some closely-related species this can be
The changeable shape of the supercilium Read More »
In a previous post I’ve talked about Trumpeter Swans with yellow bill spots as a source of confusion with Tundra Swan. I speculated that the yellow spots might be showing because the birds are leucistic (lacking melanin). The responses to that post are worthy of a follow-up. Harry Lumsden, who has studied the reintroduced Trumpeter
Trumpeter Swans, yellow bill spots, and leucism Read More »
One of the well-defined groups of feathers on the underside of a bird is what we call the breast. In reality, on songbirds these feathers grow from the front of the neck, extending down so that the tips of the feathers (which is all we can see) cover the foreparts of the body – the
Introduction to breast feathers Read More »
A recent discussion about geographic variation in Herring Gulls (on the ID-Frontiers listserve) prompted me to go back and scan some photos I took in 1998 at Cape May. At the time I was sorting out what seemed to be two populations of Herring Gulls, identifiable in their first winter by plumage and shape. There
Variation in immature American Herring Gulls Read More »