Another walk at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve this past week gave me some new views. What’s going on this turtle’s head I can’t say (Any chance he appreciates his own reflection?), but in a human this would qualify as “enjoying the sun”.
A month ago there were at least 10 black-crowned night herons at the Preserve: last week and this week I saw only one. Have they really headed north already? Would they like to think about that again? In any event, I got another entry for my sticks-but-no-snow portfolio.
On max zoom, I had the view on the left, below: this singleton hummingbird must have been at least 25 feet above me, at the end of–Oh, look!–a long stick. On max crop (on the right), you can see what caught my eye as buddy repeatedly flared his gorget, catching the sun. Imagine every stick in view adorned with a male hummer: If only they hung out in flocks!
The hummingbird’s intense glint is the result of iridescence, rather than colored pigments. The bird’s throat feathers contain minutely thin, film-like layers of “platelets,” set like tiles in a mosaic against a darker background. Light waves reflect and refract off the mosaic, creating color in the manner of sun glinting off oily film on water. – National Audubon Society
I saw two verdins coming and going and coming and going and coming and going, bringing presumably useful bits to their under-construction nest. As they flitted in and (mostly) out, I got one sharp photo and two showing them in more-typical poses: blurring until exiting the frame entirely, in this case head first. Woohoo!
And, wonder of wonders, I spotted a new bird. Look at this little beauty, surely an exotic find of some sort.
Or maybe it’s not so exotic or even new, for that matter. My bird-ID app (Merlin) pretty quickly flagged this as a house sparrow of the female variety. Insultingly quickly, really. I know the males well, of course, but had never noticed their lady friends. Just another reminder that there is always something to learn, and old things to appreciate for the first time.
