Introducing Bowie

 On July first I wrote a post about my situation at home with various birds making a mess kicking up Stan's dry cat food onto the patio. That activity has settled down immensely. Back then I also wrote...

Long ago Google figured out my interest in birds and I'm constantly reminded of this on YouTube. For several months now they have assisted in turning my attention toward Corvidae, corvids, more specifically, ravens and crows. I am particularly fascinated by the intelligence of these two families of birds.

As it turns out, I have my own "pet" corvid now. She's a California Scrub Jay, also known as a Western Scrub Jay, scientific name, Aphelocoma californica. Her name, given by me is, Bowie. While I always suspected Bowie was a female her name wasn't meant to be gender specific but was rather a reference to the shape of her beak, she has a curved or bowed beak. At least that was my first impression. Bowie has been a backyard visitor for about a year now. Every time she would show up and I tried to grab my camera, she'd be gone upon my return or she was simply inaccessible to my viewfinder while she avoided me inside the ficus trees which surround my patio. I never got a really good look at her beak until I took my first pictures of her back in September. There were a few occasions before that where I did searches for scrub jays with "curved" or "bent" beaks. It wasn't until I searched "deformed beak" that it all came together. I discovered this study at the USGS, Alaska Science Center, Beak Deformities in Landbirds. Then I looked a lot closer at Bowie's beak. The curve is in her lower mandible presumably due to growing up with a drastically shortened upper mandible. 

See...

I contacted the USGS via this web page, Beak Deformity and Banded Bird Observation Report, to submit information on Bowie, got an error and ended up sending info and a couple of images via email instead. I got a response thanking me and saying that my report would be entered in their database back on September 21st but see no evidence of that online. There's a multimedia section with photos of 39 birds here. 

Despite some scientific curiosity, overall I'm not so sure I want to know why this is happening. My speculation steers me toward human causes and quite honestly I've had enough of that knowledge in my life. Bowie's a special bird for me here and now and despite whatever anthropomorphic attributions I might be applying, Bowie is my friend.  

It took me awhile to finally decide to write this story partly based on my wanting to have more images, until last week when I discovered I had taken 770 photos of Bowie and her partner. Mostly Bowie. As of this post I have 881 images in Bowie's folder. 

These images are going in by order of date taken. At the beginning, in September, she was going through her annual molt. While a little scruffy, I think it makes her all the more charming. Here's Bowie...

This is the image first submitted to the USGS project, taken September 19, 2021.

These are from September 24th.

October 5th.

October 13th.

When she eats she needs to put her beak down almost completely on its left side. I set up a feeding area on the patio table when I noticed she would kick kibble out of Stan's dish onto the patio to enable this. She's quite effective at getting more than one piece of dry cat food in her beak. These were also taken on October 13th.

Bowie had gotten more and more accepting of my presence over the course of these photographs. She also became quite aware that I was responsible for the food she was eating. Her mate, Mr. Bowie (don't get confused, Bowie's name is Bowie, she's not Mrs. or Ms. Bowie) has not been especially trusting of me and photos were much fewer and far between. According to the National Audubon Society, "pairs typically stay together all year on their permanent territory." This is the first decent image I took of Mr. Bowie on October 13th. He's a handsome lad and as you can see his beak is quite normal.

 

 

Mr. Bowie again on October 30th.

 
On November 2nd it seemed I had a communication breakthrough with Bowie. On October 24th in anticipation of much needed rain the following day (we got .54") I put down wildflower seed throughout the property. Since then we've had several days of temperatures into the low 90ºs which meant I had to go outside with some frequency (as many as 4x daily) and dampen the ground with a hose and hand sprayer. Bowie must've taken note of this and since I was also cleaning and refilling the little birdbath (thank you Docken!) which hangs on one of the ficus she frequents, she became pretty darn vocal about it on November 2nd. The birdbath is near the east side of the yard, I always start spraying on the west side. On this occasion she squawked at me all the way to my cleaning and filling the birdbath. She was telling me to hurry up! As soon as I walked away from it she was in there having a grand old time. I rushed inside to grab my camera.

Two days later I was able to catch Mr. Bowie at the birdbath drinking and Bowie once again dining on the patio table.

That's all for now but I suspect there will be another post or two about Bowie and her activities here. I hope she sticks around. Also according to Audubon... "Mostly a permanent resident. May disperse some distance in winter, especially in dry years when the oaks produce poor acorn crops." Okay, later, I gotta go look for some acorns.

Today's walk report: 103121-Halloween

Officially, happy Halloween. Yesterday I thought I was going to work on something very different today and not post but I changed my mind and went for a late morning walk. It was cool, about 60º F, and it was cloudy, gray. I tried to make up for that in these images. Overall it was a very nice excursion.

Here are some of the over 800 pictures I took. I, in fact, in some instances, took too many pictures and in my haste to do this post I might not have picked the best ones. It happens. 

Red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) seemed everywhere again but I was moving around quite a lot and so were they, so from one spot to the next I may have been seeing a couple of the same birds in different locations. Nevertheless, there were at least three.

I had to stop to take a picture of this mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos).

Tulbaghia violacea, I believe...

This is an obligatory crow shot for Halloween.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned how my seeing Northern Flickers (Colaptes auratus) was a rarity. Maybe that has changed. I saw at least four of them today. Two pairs of male and female birds. While they do engage in the common woodpecker eating behavior of poking holes in trees looking for insects, Northern flickers spend a lot of time on the ground. They are voracious ant eating birds.

But the star of the show today was this Great Egret (Ardea alba). I was on the top of the hill facing near north and this bird was slightly down hill but the tree put us on an almost equal elevation. For my closet shots I was just under 22 meters away.

On the other hand, the goats were approximately 291 meters away.

That's it, I'm done for now. Watch out things that go bump in the night and republicans too.

Becoming Stan

 Happy Halloween!

Many posts ago I mentioned a book I received as a gift from my sister, Be More Cat. The title once again resonated with me recently during a discussion I was having with my feral feline friend Stan. To recap… Stan has been more than a welcomed visitor to this property for over four years. For about two years the lovely Docken took care of Stan when he visited mostly in the morning for some sleep and breakfast. She bought him a table for the patio and gave him two little houses, side by side on the table. He had a bed and blankets and as I recall he started using it pretty quickly. After breakfast he would generally take off to parts unknown. He still takes off for parts unknown but the obvious difference is… he does it a lot less frequently and he often comes when called, either by shaking a container of dry cat food or simply shouting out his name. Cats have an incredible sense of hearing, better than dogs and they can hear sounds four to five times farther away than humans can.

For approximately the last two years I started taking care of Stan, best I can. Remember, Stan is feral. Yes, food plays an important role. Docken still buys and donates lots of food for Stan and I let him know about it.

fe·ral

/ˈferəl,ˈfirəl/

adjective

(especially of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication."a feral cat".

After two years, I have only had Stan barely touch the tip of my outstretched index finger with his nose on a few occasions. He’s generally cautious and controls my distance from him carefully. On another level, Stan trusts me. He’s comfortable with me to a degree he probably hasn’t felt with another human and it warms my heart. While he was trusting of Docken too, the difference now is… Stan hangs out with me. Stan looks for me and waits for me. In his own way and beyond anything he had here before, for the most part, this is Stan’s home. Yeah, the food, I know, the food… same with a pet dog though.

Getting back to my recent conversation with Stan and we have at least a short conversation everyday, sometimes a few times a day. Yes, it’s mostly one sided. Most mornings he’s just waiting for me to go inside so he can eat his breakfast but he does listen and he does respond with body language and blinking eyes. While I’m basically cordial with people, brief but polite, for the most part… I don’t like people all that much. Think about friends, think about really good friends who you can count on, heck throw in some of your family. These people are few and far between. Now think of something like Facebook (excuse me, Meta). Quit Facebook (and you should), quit Instagram (and you should), quit Twitter (because it makes you stupid), quit LinkedIn (because everybody lies) and watch, most of your “friends” will melt away forever. Anyway, Stan is feral, he avoids humans, he doesn’t trust them and the older I get the more I appreciate that. With help from Covid along with a really toxic sociopolitical climate, I’m a lot like my sweet colleague Stan.

Feral—used to describe an animal (such as a cat or dog) that has escaped and become wild.

I’m in the process of escaping. Hear me growl.

Black Cat by Gentle Giant, Please substitute he/his for she/her, thank you.

Today's walk report: 101721

 Comme Ci, Comme Ça...

It was the early trip to the garden I had hoped to make yesterday. Unfortunately, it was only 46º and the lighting left something to be desired. On the upside it was a pleasant, quiet and very peaceful walk and I got to spend some time following a bird I've only seen a couple of times before.

At first I thought... maybe I'm only going to get pictures of the sky today?

 

There are few signs of the change in seasons.

I did happen to see the Calypte anna hummingbird known as Dusty but the few pictures captured were beyond the compromises I'm going to make for the next bird. The funny thing about Dusty this morning was right after I did get a few camera clicks off he took off, soaring way up to the top of one of the tallest pine trees on the campus. Perched on top of that tree there appeared to be a modest sized bird of prey, perhaps a prairie falcon and I don't know if it was Dusty's intention but he went straight at it and the other bird quickly departed. I decided not to wait for Dusty's return. 

Instead I headed up the dreaded stairs to the top of the hill. I didn't realize what these birds were when I took this picture. Since one of them moved along ahead of my path I soon figured it out. This is a pair of northern flickers (Colaptes auratus). They're part of the woodpecker family. I've only been able to capture images of flickers a couple of times in the past. The little bird over the one on the left was probably a black phoebe (Sayornis nigricans).

Lucky for me the bird on the left went in the same direction I was headed. In my past encounters I never realized just how varied and beautiful their overall plumage was. So I'm posting some images to show you what I saw. Unfortunately my shutter speed, lighting and distance from the bird were far from optimal. I believe this is a young female.

The surprising burst of color when the bird was taking flight...

Also, I've got to say, lately I've had some real struggles in focusing on my subject and not a bunch of sticks.

These mourning doves were somewhat obliging however one more step forward and they bailed on me.

And with that I headed home.