First, from Stephen Barnard, who’s documenting a pair of bald eagles raising a brood near his home in Idaho. Here are “two eaglets having breakfast”. So we know that, for this brood, n > 2.
Reader Edward Kroc sent several photos taken in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Here’s one he calls “River otter with dinner.” The otter is Lontra canadensis, but can anyone identify the dinner?
“. . . one of the stranger looking waterfowl in the Vancouver area: the American Coot (Fulica americana). This species has a hard time getting airborne, often running on the water’s surface to build up some momentum.”
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“A pair of Buffleheads (Bucephala albeola), male on the left, female on the right. These small diving ducks always look to me like they’re hiding a smile. Buffleheads rarely walk on dry land; I’ve still yet to see one out of the water or the air.
Finally some squee, labeled by Edward “First gosling of the season.” I don’t know from geese, but it must be a Canada goose (Branta canadensis). Don’t you just want to nuzzle it?
Oh that baby goose! So soft looking!
The fish the otter has looks halibut-esque but I really have no idea.
Coots are more photogenic than I’d remembered.
That otter’s catch looks like a starry flounder.
The fish could be a starry flounder given the bars on the fins.
“I don’t know from geese, but it must be a Canada goose (Branta canadensis). Don’t you just want to nuzzle it?”
Actually, no – they bite. One time on a visit to Toronto (about 35 years ago), my wife and I were out walking on the jetty behind the motel we were staying at. There was a large group of Canada Geese near the water at the far end. When we got about fifty feet from where they were, they chased us back inland, one of them biting my wife on the butt. Of course, these were adults – not a cute little one.
They probably had nests down there. I worked at a park and they’d take their time crossing the road, hissing the whole time at cars.
I fed them my pizza crusts sometimes though & no one tried to bite me. Thinking back, bread was probably a bad thing to feed them.
Yeah, you want to nuzzle it until it grows up and it and several of its cousins crap all over your park and you keep stepping in goose sh*t. Then you want to hunt it down, cook it up, and eat it!
You can really learn a lot from this blog and the comments, too. The otter’s catch did look like a flounder, but “starry flounder” is a new one for anyone who knows very little about west coast flounder. Looking it up, from pictures, it does indeed seem to be a starry flounder. It is surely a great photo. Thanks!
I think “dinner” is Sally. Ah, well….
b&
Comparing it with other pictures online, the starry flounder ID definitely seems to be right. I know so little about fish, I didn’t have much of a shot of identifying the species on my own. Thanks for the ID!
Coots do have to run on the water to get airborne, but so do the buffleheads. In fact all diving birds have to do that. Efficient diving demands heavy bones, so diving birds have higher wing loading than non-divers and so need to be going faster to generate enough lift for takeoff. Dabbling ducks and geese, on the other hand, can take off directly from a sitting start.
I think n=2 is most likely. They raised three in 2012, 2 in 2013, and it looks like 2 in 2014, so far. That’s 7 in 3 years. Not a bad average.
I intended this as a top-level comment, and not as a reply to you, John Harshman. Sorry.
All these wonderful photos make me want to get a decent camera to get shots of my local wildlife. Plenty of kookaburras, the tawny frogmouths that freak me out when I don’t know they are on an avocado tree when I’m picking them and my favourite of all, the black cockatoos. They are huge and magnificent and have the most heart wrenching call of any bird I have ever heard. They have recently returned to my place and it is wonderful to see and hear them hundreds of feet up circling the ridges.
I do get ducks in the dams but they are very ordinary looking compared to these colourful ones.
River otter is Lutra canadensis.
I agree with the flounder diagnosis even though I’d never seen such a colorful flounder.
Well, that’s the side of the flounder that you usually don’t see.