A Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocoracidae: Phalacrocorax auritus) quickly swam by a few times while we were snorkeling at Three Sisters Springs.
While in a different family (Anhingidae), Anhinga appear similar and are behaviorally similar to cormorants, and the easiest means to telling the two apart, in my experience, is to look for the more robust, curved bill in the cormorant.
Members and volunteers of the San Vito Bird Club band and take measures of mist-netted birds they’ve caught at Finca Cantaros in 2013.
Down Cerro Chai, some students spotted a dark-morph Crested Owl. Daniel (aka Bird) takes a photo through binoculars with his iPhone.
Michael, an undergraduate researcher out of Stanford, is working at Las Cruces on animal decomposition. Briefly, he’s set out freshly-killed adult chickens and chicks in forests and agricultural lands (i.e., pasture and coffee plantation) and monitors what happens…
He’s got camera traps trained on the adult chickens, and uses transects through both habitat types to pair replicate locations with both major habitats. It’s interesting (and rather smelly) work: there are a number of specialist scavengers that feed on animal matter, and the roles animal detritus (feces + dead animal) play in communities is often overlooked in light of the overwhelming biomass that plants input into detrital pools in ecosystems. Michael has already found some exciting facilitation effects within the scavenger community.
Michael was kind enough to take me along on one of his sampling dates.
Nope, just a feather of Tinamu major.
I don’t have a zoom lens any longer, given that I sold it to buy a nice macrolens… That said, there is an American Purple Gallinule in the center of the frame below. I encountered adults, dule-colored juveniles, and chicks, which were entirely black. Once again, these were taken at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge.
Dendrocygna autumnalis and chicks at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge just passed the Georgia-South Carolina border.
Black-bellied Whistling Ducks and White Ibis fly over some open water at the start of the wet season in Palo Verde, 2009.
On my visit to Santa Barbara, California, Raja and I observed a decently-sized flock of snowy plovers, a threatened shore bird currently being managed in several reserves up the Californian coast. While attempting to photograph the birds, a volunteer literally ran down the beach to tell me to keep moving to reduce disturbance to the fledglings. The reserve is more-or-less constantly patrolled by volunteers with a variety of experiences in conservation biology, as evidenced by this particular volunteer’s lack of knowledge about the plover’s restoration and referral to another individual to answer my questions.
