We’re running a bit low on these again, so if you have good photos (and please make sure they’re high-quality, as I hate rejecting people’s snaps), send them along.
Two contributors today. First, reader Stephen Barnard from Idaho with an owl (the email was labeled, “Looks something like a cat,” and of course owls are considered Honorary Cats™ on this site).
This Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) spooked out of a spruce by my house and flew into the willows across the creek.
And reader John Harshman sends us photos from Australia:
A female and male magpie lark (Grallina cyanoleuca). These birds are common just about everywhere I went, and I was struck by the different facial patterns in an otherwise similar plumage.
Female:
Male:
Female olive-backed sunbird (Cynnyris jugularis) peeking out of her nest. This is Australia’s only sunbird, and the nest is built over a river to resemble a bit of flood debris.
A pair of pink-eared ducks (Malacorhynchus membranaceus). The name is for the tiny pink spot you can see if you squint, just behind the black eye-patch. The weird, flanged bills are used to filter-feed plankton. Phylogenetically, they’re out on a very long branch all by themselves, and aren’t closely related to the typical ducks (Anatinae). There’s a lot of that going around in Australia.
____________
Mystery birds from above: (clockwise from top): little black cormorant (Phalacrocorax sulcirostris), Australasian darter (Anhinga novaehollandiae), intermediate egret (Egretta intermedia), little pied cormorant (Phalacrocorax melanoleucos).
Idaho. Not Iowa.
I knew that!!!! Fixed.
Spectacular pix!! Love the owl in the willow.
Easy! Clockwise from top, it’s Roger, Susan, Bob, and Dribnaghkkkkbp.
b&
Stephen, we can never see enough owls. 😉 The tangle there makes one wonder how on earth the owl got in it in the first place, but I suspect there’s a lot of foreshortening with that lens.
John, you absolutely made my day! Sunbird nest mimicking flood debris! Filter-feeding ducks!
Now, how can I get to Australia?!
Qantas?
Yeah, yeah, I expected that. 😉
That’s good, because I was going to go with, “practice, practice, practice”….
b&
Ha, ha, I never expected that!
Bet you didn’t expect the comfy chair, either!
b&
Well, more or less–I was obviously waiting for Spanish Inquisition joke…;)
Blast…next time I’ll have to go the Portuguese Questionnaire route — or maybe even the Basque Survey! Nobody will expect that one!
b&