A New Mexican sunrise over the Kwage mesa.
2021-12-07 Los Alamos, NM
A little later that same morning the fog was lifting from the Potomac River.
2021-10-02 Potomac River, Great Falls, MD [DSC02484]
Daybreak seen through the rising mist on the C&O canal, where it widens into a lake. An actual landscape, with nary a bird in sight.
2021-10-02 C&O Canal, Great Falls, MD [DSC02458]
A great blue heron standing in a shallow retention pond. This is the same bird shown in [RBD #208](https://tanya-riseman.squarespace.com/rbd-2022-01/4c0fw3c4wyqymvdu9l15o7of501f5r) before it took flight. I really wasn't that close!
2021-12-24 Blue Mash Nature Trail, Gaithersburg, MD [IMG_9389]
A mallard taking his evening swim at the local pond. Waves really do interact (mostly) linearly.
2021-03-02 NIH pond, Bethesda, MD [DCC03219]
Some ring-necked ducks eating breakfast in the marsh.
2021-03-14 McKee-Beshers WMA, Poolesville, MD [DSC06031]
A long-tailed duck sitting in the ocean off Sandy Point. A surprising name since clearly her tail is not particularly long. It's a guy thing.
I like the snow-capped peaks in the foreground. It's a nice change from the usual landscape.
2021-02-21 Sandy Point Park, Annapolis, MD [P1170811]
We can see that it is a "fisher", but what about the "king"? Looking at an old dictionary the name is shortened from "King's fisher."[1] Tolkien says that like the swan, the King's fisher was a royal bird.[2] I wonder if it's because of the royal blue cape of the European kingfisher?
It is also known as the halcyon, after Alcyone who was turned into a kingfisher when she threw herself into the sea. Her father Aeolus calms the storms so that she can lay her eggs in peace during the halcyon days of winter.[4]
2022-01-23 Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC [IMG_9976]
[1] Guy Miege, Gent. (1690) The short french dictionary in two parts.
[2] The letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 240 to Mrs. Pauline Gasch, illustrator, 1962.
Yet another little brown bird, this one with yellow highlights so people can name her.
2021-02-20 Blue Mash Nature Trail, Gaithersburg, MD [P1170567]
… as you can see from the photo.
2022-01-15 Blue Mash Nature Trail, Gaithersburg, MD
Pink beak, white eye-ring, so it's a field sparrow. Rusty crown and white breast so adult. No dimorphism, so sex unknown. It's kind of hard to get a picture when it hides in the bushes like this.
2022-01-15 Blue Mash Nature Trail, Gaithersburg, MD
A chickadee fluffball trapping air in its feathers to keep warm on this cold winter morning.
2022-01-16 McKee-Beshers WMA, Poolesville, MD
A little sparrow scurries across the ice nipping bits of duckweed that escaped the frozen lake. How does it run barefoot when my gloved fingers are numb with cold?
A bit of latin rete mirabile hints at the answer: countercurrent heat exchangers. Waterfowl have a "miraculous network" of veins that wrap around the arteries, cooling the blood that goes to the feet and warming it as it returns. In cold weather the blood may be 4ºC going through the webbing. Passerine birds have a less developed system, with veins and arteries running in parallel, which apparently is enough for this song sparrow.
2022-01-16 McKee-Beshers WMA, Poolesville, MD [DSC06984]
Not a feather, but another mystery of growth and development. These ice needles sprouted from blades of grass surrounding a little hollow on the path by the swamp. The temperature was about -8 C, which is a bit warm for ice needles[1] but maybe a bit of rot keeps things warm and moist so the needles can grow.
2022-01-16 McKee-Beshers WMA, Poolesville, MD [DSC06988,DSC06993]
[1] http://www.snowcrystals.com/morphology/SnowflakeMorphology2.jpg
Another cedar waxwing (see #190), this one showing the yellow tips on the tail. National Geographic says, "Some birds (especially immatures) have an orange tail tip, a result of consuming non-native honeysuckle fruit during molt." Judging by photos on iNaturalist the orange tail tips are rare.
If you look at the details at the end of the feather, the individual barbs change colour at just the right time so that the yellow tip cuts straight across. Here is a 6 min video on how feathers grow if you are curious.
2021-12-26 McKee-Beshers WMA, Poolesville, MD [IMG_9585]
This great blue heron decided that I was too close, so it flew to the other side of the pond, making our Christmas Eve walk a little more colourful. Alas, still no Reindeer-in-Flight (RIF) photos.
2021-12-24 Blue Mash Nature Trail, Gaithersburg, MD [IMG_9400]
Note: this is another somewhat unusual pose, barely within the top 500 GBHe photos on Flickr (out of 450,000+)
Yet another non-classic pose, a purple martin trims her tail flaps in preparation for landing.
2021-06-20 NIH pond, Bethesda, MD [DSC00317]
Launching herself from her perch, an American goldfinch flew right toward me before disappearing into the woods. This is a photo from Washington Monument State Park, home of the original Washington Monument. I like the fanning of the tail.
Not your classic BIF shot. Those are wings, not bat ears!
2021-11-24 Washington Monument State Park, Boonsboro, MD
Back to the BIF theme, here's a red-shouldered hawk taking flight from its perch. There's a pair of them that hang out at the local pond. Maybe this is the same one as #178 Red-shouldered hawk.
2021-11-29 NIH pond, Bethesda, MD [DSC04489]
Under the sea…
Check out Elliot's twitter thread for details of his design and construction, plus many more pics!
2022-01-10 Bethesda, MD [DSC06735]
A goose taking off from the local pond. You can still see the drops of water coming off the feet from the run up to take-off.
2021-11-10 NIH pond, Bethesda, MD
More fall colours: a song sparrow in front of a very blurry sumac thicket. This is the same setting as #159 Goldenrod sp.
2021-11-07 NIH pond, Bethesda, MD [IMG_9914]
Some autumn colours to remind us of Thanksgiving.
2021-11-13 Sugarloaf Mt, Poolesville, MD [IMG_0430]
This guy was one of several paddling through the muck, spending most of their time eating. The female is yet another non-descript brown dappled duck.
2021-12-19 Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria, VA [IMG_1301]
About ~15cm of snow fell on Monday hiding the cherry blossoms (Prunus × subhirtella) in a winter wonderland.
2022-01-03 NIH pond, Bethesda, MD [DSC06415]
No, not stop-motion photography. Just a whole lot of birds coming in to land at the same time.
2021-12-30 Outlook Farm, Westhampton, MA [IMG_9778]
A fellow traveler with the chickadees and titmouses, these cardinals were enjoying some japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica). Although the seeds are pretty, the knotweed is one of the top 100 worst invasive species in the world.[1] Deep roots (3 m) adaptable to all soil types and a lot of seeds make this hard to eliminate. It can survive -35 C, so Massachusetts winters aren't going to touch it.
2021-12-30 Barrett St Marsh, Northampton, MA [IMG_9704]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynoutria_japonica#Invasive_species
A black-capped chickadee traveling with yesterday's titmouse.
These are different from the carolina chickadee (#75), and can be distinguished by the "hockey stick" on the wing. They do not exist in Bethesda, being outcompeted by the carolinas. Girl chickadees prefer carolina to black-cap, so as soon as it is warm enough the black-caps disappear. Maybe they don't like hockey obsessed guys?
2021-12-30 Barrett St. Marsh, Northampton, MA [IMG_9727]
A tufted titmouse looking a bit surprised on a branch.
The name is a compound from tit+mouse, meaning "little little".[1] This is a bit of a misnomer: they are larger than the chickadees they travel with. The plural is titmouses, not titmice, which makes me a little bit sad.
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/titmouse
2021-12-30 Barrett St. Marsh, Northampton, MA [IMG_9707]
PS, When looking up "Why is a titmouse called a titmouse?" a related question on that website was "Who is Robert Morris?". I couldn't find any association between Robert Morris and titmouses, either for the signer of the Declaration of Independence or the creator of the internet worm. I'm not including the website because it is unusable with javascript.
Happy New Year!
2021-12-28 Wheaton Regional Park, Silver Spring, MD [DSC06078]