Today’s Dawn Chorus was inspired by an encounter I had with an accidental Black-capped Chickadee a couple of months ago. BCCHs are unknown in my island county even though they are common on the mainland 10 miles away. But in December I saw one disheveled Black-cap appear at my seed feeder, likely blown across the water in a recent violent winter storm, the winds were over 60 knots (I wrote a Daily Bucket about it back then). Besides the color differences and behavior, the most obvious feature distinguishing it from my resident abundant Chestnut-backed Chickadees is its size. As you can see in the photo above, the Black-cap is noticeably longer than the Chestnut-back.
Usually we think of “birds of a feather flocking together”. But the contrast between these two chickadees got me thinking about size differences of other birds in my neighborhood. Birds are unique among animals in their mobility, which means they are frequently around DIFFERENT kinds of birds than their own species. It can be very surprising to see the contrasts.
This Dawn Chorus will take you on a journey through my neighborhood to see some of those contrasts. Get ready...there are tons of examples. I’d love to see any examples you have of this kind of size contrast — please add them in the comments!
A couple more feeder captures:
Now let’s go out onto the bays and beaches near my home. Once I began looking through my photos I discovered that I have a gazillion photos of Glaucous-winged Gulls, by far the most common gull here and a year-round resident. Starting with this photo of a GWGU loitering around a flock of Buffleheads hoping to steal some food they’ve caught, we can look upon a GWGU as a standard by which we can compare many other birds.
That’s it from me. Hope you enjoyed the journey through my neighborhood of birds.
This Dawn Chorus is scheduled to publish at 6am PST as usual. I don’t wake up that early, so go ahead with your bird observations of the past week in the comments, and I’ll join you later!