Category: birds

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 8, 2026 • 8:15 am

Ecologist Susan Harrison is back with some bird photos from California featuring rookeries (there are some lovely shots of chicks and juveniles).  Susan’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

Rookery Scenes

Recently I visited two local rookeries where colonies of large wading birds breed in early- to midsummer.   It was fun to watch the nest building, egg tending, and varied interactions among adults and young birds of mixed ages.   In some cases (like the Cattle Egrets), it appeared that young birds were competing with each other to be at the head of the feeding line.

Western Cattle Egrets (Ardea ibis), Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax), and Snowy Egrets (Egretta thula) were breeding at Sacramento’s North Natomas Regional Park.

White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi) were rearing their young at the Woodland-Davis water treatment ponds, which in spite of their unprepossessing title, are our county’s top eBird hotspot and the subject of much ecological enhancement for migratory birds and other wildlife.

Cattle Egrets:

White-faced Ibis:

Black-crowned Night Herons:

Snowy Egrets:

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 3, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today’s batch of photos comes from Kevin Krebs, who’s been busy banding birds in south-central British Columbia. Kevin’s captions and IDs are indented, and, as always, you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Since 2018, the Vancouver Avian Research Centre (VARC) has been involved in Bluebird Box Monitoring around the city of Merritt in south-central British Columbia.

Like almost all birds, bluebird numbers have been declining, and we’ve recruited many volunteers to maintain and monitor over 400 nest boxes.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to join some compatriots checking nest boxes and banding bluebird nestlings.

Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides)

Mountain Bluebirds (Sialia currucoides) are found throughout Western and Central North America. The males are a brilliant cerulean blue that is almost impossible to capture in a photograph. Imagine a small piece of the most vibrant blue sky you’ve ever seen growing wings and flying free.

They’re medium-distance migrants, with some breeding into Alaska, and wintering down into Northern Mexico. They are cavity nesters and rely heavily on old woodpecker holes, often facing significant competition. North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data from 1970–2014 shows an estimated overall population decline of 21%. Recent research suggests a more complex picture, with some populations declining, some stable, and some increasing.

Next box and Mountain Bluebird eggs

On the left, an example of our nest boxes. Most are located on fenceposts, while a handful are placed on trees and stumps.

On the right, an active Mountain Bluebird nest with four eggs. Their nests are made of dried grasses beautifully woven into a cup, with a few feathers often mixed in. Their eggs are pale blue and slightly glossy.

Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) eggs and young nestlings

In addition to Mountain Bluebirds (and rarely Western Bluebirds (Sialia mexicana)), these nest boxes are frequently used by Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor).

Somewhat similar to bluebird nests, Tree Swallow nests feature significantly more feathers in their construction. On the left is a nest with eight eggs — matte white and much smaller than the bluebird eggs (my fingers give a sense of scale).

On the right: a nest with six very young Tree Swallow nestlings.

Tree Swallow nestlings

Another Tree Swallow nest with at least six older nestlings. Their eyes have yet to open, so they’re probably only a few days older than those pictured above. The comically large and bright mouths are selected to draw as much attention from their parents as possible, ensuring they get fed.

Adult Tree Swallow

An adult male Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) who started out as one of those little eggs.

Northern House Wren (Troglodytes aedon)

Another bird that occasionally uses these nest boxes is the Northern House Wren (Troglodytes aedon). There’s no mistaking their nests as they have a profoundly different style of nest-building, packing nearly the entire box with dozens of twigs.

On the right, a peek into the nest revealing the feather-lined cup with seven mottled eggs.

Mountain Bluebird nestlings

This is what we were looking for: Mountain Bluebird nestlings. These birds are 9-10 days old, making them old enough to band. We can’t band them when they’re much younger as they store fat in their legs, making them too large for the metal bands we use.

Banded Mountain Bluebird nestlings

Two Mountain Bluebird nestlings in the hand.

Before anyone panics: yes, I am trained to do this and am operating under a permit! I don’t think I need to tell any of you not to try this yourself.

The bird on the left is around 12 days old, while the one on the right is approximately 15 days old — probably within a few days of leaving the nest.

Note that we use federally numbered bands, anodized with a different colour for each year. This allows us to identify adult birds to the year they were banded, even if we can’t get the band number.

Banding in progress

A photo of me in the process of banding some nestlings. The bags on my lap contain birds to be banded and that have been banded. Once they’re all completed, we carefully and quietly place them back in the nest box.

Not pictured is when I sat directly on top of an ant nest while getting ready to band…

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 2, 2026 • 8:30 am

Send in your photos if you got ’em, please!

Today’s photos continue the series taken by reader Ephraim Heller in Namibia. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Today I continue my series on a May-June 2026 visit to Namibia. I’m organizing the posts by habitat, in the order of our visits, so that you get a sense of the ecosystems. Today’s post features Damaraland, a 48,000 km² region in the northwest of the country.

Damaraland is not a formal administrative region, but a geographic and cultural designation. It is a jumble of granite kopjes, basalt plateaus, flat-topped mountains, broad gravel plains, and eroded canyon systems. Like much of Namibia, it is desert. Here is an aerial view, taken from the window of a small airplane:

Life is sparse here. A handful of ephemeral rivers cross Damaraland, cutting westward from the interior highlands to the Skeleton Coast along the Atlantic Ocean. These rivers flow above ground for only a few days per year following significant inland rainfall, but each bed sits atop an alluvial aquifer that retains water from flood events for months to years. This subsurface water sustains a few trees, shrubs, and animals along the riverbeds. Here’s another aerial view showing the path of an ephemeral river:

By far the coolest critter I found was the longleg armoured corncricket (Acanthoplus longipes), which has superpowers. It is a large, flightless katydid brandishing big, spiny legs and a heavily armored (American spelling) pronotum. When attacked, individuals autohaemorrhage, shooting a jet of toxic hemolymph from the leg joints toward attackers. I wish I had a superpower like that:

Naturally, any creature with such a magnificent superpower fluoresces under UV light:

Frankly, the rest of this post is anticlimactic. What could possibly beat a longleg armoured corncricket? Not a pretty brush jewel beetle (Julodis humeralis):

A Namib rock agama (Agama planiceps) doesn’t beat a longleg armoured corncricket, not even when it is chowing down on a bug:

One night I went on a walk to see what would fluoresce under my UV light. I found this gecko. Sure, fluorescence is cool and I wish I could do it, but does this gecko autohaemorrhage? No, it does not. The folks at iNaturalist couldn’t identify it – apparently one needs the visible spectrum to make a positive ID:

This is tentatively identified as an orange lesser-thicktail scorpion (Uroplectes planimanus), another critter with the minor UV-fluorescence superpower. Interestingly, researchers do not know why scorpions evolved fluorescence.

Now for the birds. Sadly, they have no superpowers at all. Our lodge had a water feature that was the only surface water for miles around. I spent hours watching the birds bathe and drink.

A violet-backed starling (Cinnyricinclus leucogaster). The color is produced not by pigment but by thin-film interference: stacks of hollow melanosomes in the feather barbules refract light at specific wavelengths. The male can modulate its apparent coloration through posture:

A black-fronted bulbul (Pycnonotus nigricans):

A Namaqua dove (Oena capensis):

A red-headed finch (Amadina erythrocephala):

The southern masked weaver (Ploceus velatus). Egg color varies among females, allegedly as a defense against brood parasitism by the Diederik cuckoo. Because the cuckoo cannot know egg color before entering the nest, color polymorphism in the weaver population raises the probability of parasite detection and egg ejection. Not a superpower, but cool nonetheless. I just like the bokeh in this photo:

Finally, the requisite Namibian desert night sky photos:

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 30, 2026 • 8:15 am

Please send in your good wildlife photos if you have any.

‘Today’s batch comes from UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison, who’s been birding in Scandinavia. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them,.

Further Finnish Fowl

Just after I sent Jerry the recent post titled “Midsummer in the Åland Islands,” a few more scenes of waterfowl families brightened my trip to Finland.

The first three are from Lake Kallavesi, near the town of Kuopio in the heart of Finnish Lakeland.   My friend’s family has a classic lake cabin here, tiny and perfectly built, complete with flower garden, sauna, and dock.  Once my kind hosts had settled me in, I hopped in their rowboat in search of birds.

Whooper Swans (Cygnus cygnus) are Finland’s national bird and are featured on the country’s Euro coin.  With wingspans up to 9’ (2.75 m) and weighing up to 30 lb (14 kg), they are the world’s second largest waterfowl (right after their close North American relative the Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator). Even the cygnets in these photos are the size of Thanksgiving turkeys!

Whooper Swan parent and cygnets:

Arctic Loons, aka Black-throated Loons or Black-throated Divers (Gavia arctica) can often be heard making their musical calls, but are less often seen as they are shy and tend to vanish underwater.  These two adults were slowed down enough by their youngster that I managed a distant photo.

Arctic Loons:

Red-necked Grebes (Podiceps grisigena), like other grebes, carry stripey black-and-white chicks on their backs (see, for comparison, the Great Crested Grebes in the recent post). This little passenger was so tiny that I noticed it only when processing the photos.

Red-necked Grebes:

Back in Helsinki on my way home, various geese and ducks were abundant along the shore in  Kaivopuisto city park. Most enjoyable was a family of Common Mergansers, aka Goosanders (Mergus merganser), in which the young foraged for themselves under a parent’s supervision.

Common Mergansers:

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 29, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today we have photos from Jan Malik taken at Cape May, New Jersey emphasizing the bizarre horseshoe crabs, which are not crustaceans but chelicerates, more closely related to spiders and scorpions than to real crabs.  Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

People visit Cape May, NJ, in spring, mostly to see the migrating birds, but what makes the high density of animal migrants and residents possible in that area is in large part hidden in the water. Delaware Bay is home to a large population of the Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) which spawn around the time the migrating birds pass through. Horseshoe crabs’ eggs, along with crabs themselves, are an important link in the food chain that fuels the spring migration.

Early morning visitors to the Delaware Bay side of Cape May are welcomed by the ruckus made by Laughing Gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla). These birds nest locally but also depend on the crabs as a major food source:

Walking onto the beach in the morning after a high tide, a visitor will see these animals stranded helplessly on their backs, flipped by the waves:

Here is a larger female with a male still attached. All three parts of a crab are visible: the main body (prosoma) with mouth and legs, an abdomen (opisthosoma) with book gills and a tail (telson). What can be also seen here are male’s pincers, modified forelegs used to grasp the carapace of the female:

The crabs are not blind thanks to their pair of compound eyes. They also have 8 other simple eyes and ocelli distributed on top of their carapace and additional photosensors underneath and on the telson. These organs are sensitive to UV and visible light and are used to detect phases of the lunar cycle and determine when to come out of water onto the sand to mate and lay eggs:

The primary function of a telson is to help the animal steer and to right itself in water. On dry land, however, it is of little help and a flipped crab, if left on its own, usually succumbs to desiccation or is preyed upon by other animals:

 A human visitor to the beach has to decide whether to save the crab or leave it to die and let birds have their fill. In my case I usually flip them back on, giving them a chance to live another day. They are used by the medical industry to develop a test for the presence of bacteria in medical devices, which involves catching them, drawing about a quarter of their blood and then releasing them, but such a crab is then greatly weakened and mortality is high:

A Sanderling (Calidris alba) eating a horseshoe crab egg. For some evolutionary reason, these marine arthropods must leave the water in order to lay eggs. They prefer to do the laying at high tide, hence the lunar phase detection. The eggs may be then uncovered by waves and spread far and wide on the beach:

The waves may also uncover a whole cluster of eggs which is then found by shorebirds patrolling the ecotone between the sea and the land:

This is what the washed up eggs look like; eggs are 1.5 mm to 2 mm in diameter and they grow as the embryos inside them grow. This is the main fuel for the thousands of plovers, sanderlings, turnstones, red knots and others on their way toward the Arctic:

Using a macro lens, one can make out an embryo inside, complete with legs, telson and tiny eyes:

I think it was only at the beginning of this century that the significance of these “crabs” (which have a common ancestor with spiders and scorpions) for migrating birds was properly recognized and some harvesting bans were put in place in NJ and Delaware. Before, they would be harvested in excess as crab bait or just for fertilizer. This picture shows how they can be a host to barnacles and limpets:

Even though they can and do come onshore during daytime, they prefer nighttime at high tide, at new or full moon. In the Delaware Bay, many thousands of them come out then, males crowding around the females to claim the best spot and be first to fertilize eggs. They must have been doing similar things for many millions of years – earliest fossils with similar body plans date back to Paleozoic era, 450 mya, which was well before the dinosaurs. Fossils quite similar to the Atlantic crab date back 200 mya. There were many species but now only four are left, this site presents a neat diagram illustrating their evolutionary history:

Just to give a sense of scale, here is a “scrum” of crabs around human feet:

Spring migration attracts many visitors to Cape May, benefiting local businesses. I think it is just to also count humans as dependent on these “crabs”, to an extent. Note that the forefront crab has a tag from the US Fish and Wildlife Services, allowing it to track the animal:

 

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 26, 2026 • 8:30 am

We can keep going for two days after this, but if you got photos, please send ’em. Thanks.

Today’s batch is from Ephraim Heller, continuing his photos from a recent trip to Namibia. Ephraim’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his pictures by clicking on them. Don’t miss the chameleon with its tongue extended!

Today I continue my series on a May-June 2026 visit to Namibia. I’m organizing the posts by habitat, in the order of our visits, so that you get a sense of the ecosystems. My last post focused on the Namib desert. This post focuses on my next destination, Swakopmund, a cold, fog-covered town along the Namib desert’s Atlantic coast.

Annual rainfall is less than 20 mm, but the town experiences ~180 days/year of thick fog, generated offshore when the cold Benguela Current contacts warm desert air. The fog typically settles in the early morning hours and burns off by mid-morning. The fog provides moisture that enables some vegetation to grow in a strip along the ocean. In addition, there is a small, brackish estuary at the mouth of the ephemeral Swakop River that supports marine birds. This photo, taken with my iPhone on an after-dinner stroll from a restaurant to our hotel, gives you a sense of the fog:

A herd of dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius) grazing along the shoreline often startles visitors to Swakopmund. Dromedaries are not native to Africa. The species was domesticated on the southeastern Arabian Peninsula about 4,000 years ago and has not occurred naturally in the wild for nearly 2,000 years. They were imported to Namibia by the German colonial troops in 1889 for use as military pack animals in what was then German South West Africa. The animals I saw grazing along the shore are used by a local company for tourist rides. This is a handsome individual:

However, not everyone gets to ride the camels:

The most impressive aspect of our stay in Swakopmund was a short “living desert” safari. A guide took us on a walk and drive in the sand dunes immediately around the town. Where I saw pristine sand, the guide saw the telltale marks of animals burrowed in the sand.

The first individual he unearthed was a desert sidewinding adder (Bitis peringueyi), a small, ambush predator. The one he found was about 15 cm (6 in) in length. The eyes are positioned on top of the head rather than on the sides, adapted to allow the adder to bury itself in loose sand, leaving only the eyes exposed at the surface while waiting for prey. Prey includes sand lizards and barking geckos, which also provide most of the adder’s water needs. I took these close-up photos with my macro lens – kids, don’t try this at home:

Next, our guide uncovered a buried Namib sand gecko (Pachydactylus rangei), certainly the most charismatic of the desert critters. The large feet with webbed toes are good for running on loose sand and for excavating burrows. They burrow into dunes by day to escape the heat, emerging after dark to hunt insects and spiders.

These geckos also emerge during fog events and allow droplets to condense on their skin, then lick water from their own faces and bodies. In 2021 researchers reported that P. rangei produces a neon-green biofluorescence under UV and moonlight conditions using a new mechanism in terrestrial vertebrates. I wish I had known this at the time so I could have photographed them under moonlight. Regardless, these are clearly very happy creatures:

Of course, no visit to the Namib desert dunes is complete without a FitzSimon’s burrowing skink (Typhlacontias brevipes). The FBS is blind, legless, just a few inches long, and spends its entire life burrowed in the sand. The species has reduced eyes without eyelids and no visible external ear openings. It detects prey (ants, termites, ant-lions, and small beetles) by sensing the vibrations they produce when moving through sand:

Finally, our living desert guide found surface critter: a Namaqua chameleon (Chamaeleo namaquensis). The Namaqua chameleon is one of the largest chameleons in southern Africa (up to 25 cm or 9.8 in), and unusual in the family for being terrestrial rather than arboreal. In the early morning, this chameleon darkens to near black to maximize heat uptake; as body temperature rises, it lightens toward grey-brown to reduce absorption. Water is obtained through the diet, from morning dew, and through hygroscopic skin that absorbs moisture by capillary action (wow!). Nasal salt glands excrete excess sodium chloride and potassium, allowing salts to be processed without renal water loss:

The eyes can move independently, looking in different directions:

The tail is shorter than those of arboreal chameleons, and has lost its prehensile abilities:

The guide had some mealworms with which to entice the chameleon. It’s tongue was so fast its movement was hard to see with the naked eye:

Now for the birds. First up, a colorful common waxbill (Estrilda astrild):

Next, a common but lovely speckled pigeon (Columba guinea) with an excellent hair stylist and makeup artist:

A portrait of another common but colorful bird, the helmeted guinea fowl (Numida meleagris). This one looks pensive:

We took a tourist boat cruise to see the Cape fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus) colony near Walvis Bay. The Cape fur seal population along the southwest African coast is estimated at 1.5 – 2 million animals, roughly two-thirds of which occur along the Namibian coast.

Cape fur seals are eared seals (family Otariidae) rather than true seals. Unlike true seals, which move on land by undulating their bodies, otariids can rotate their hind flippers forward and walk on all four limbs, giving them considerably more agility.

During breeding season, bulls fight to establish territories and maintain harems of 5 to 25 females. A bull may lose nearly half his body mass over the six-week breeding season without leaving his territory to feed. Mothers leave their pups on shore while they feed in the ocean. When they return to shore, mothers and pups find each other by making unique vocalizations, amazing in colonies of tens of thousands of animals.

Seal colonies on land are predated by black-backed jackals and brown hyenas, who target pups. At sea, they are preyed upon by white sharks and killer whales. Here’s a photo from the boat:

I’ll have more cape fur seal photos in a future post.

Our guide on the boat feeds fish to the great white pelicans (Pelecanus onocrotalus). While I don’t support baiting, one of the pelicans landed on the boat for its free meal, enabling me to get this portrait:

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 25, 2026 • 8:20 am

Today we have photos of Finland from ecologist Susan Harrison of UC Davis. Susan’s captions and IDs are indented and you can enlarge them by clicking on them.

Midsummer in the Åland Islands, Finland

On the tiny Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea, humans observe Midsummer Eve in traditional Swedish style.  Towering, vine-decorated maypoles are raised in an hourlong process of pole-pushing and rope-pulling, followed by folk music and dancing.

Midsummer Eve at around 9 pm, Kastelholm, Åland:

Birds, meanwhile, have even more urgent preoccupations than celebrating the summer solstice.  Parents are feeding screaming chicks, who jostle for the front of the chow line.

Mute Swans (Cygnus olor) pulling up seaweed for their cygnets:

Great Crested Grebes (Podiceps cristatus) providing transportation and food delivery:

Common Terns (Sterna hirundo), one pair feeding their sole chick fish and insects, while absent adults at the neighboring nest are awaited by two noisy chicks:

Jackdaws (Coloelus modedula), adult and ravenous juvenile:

Barnacle Geese (Branta leucopsis) defending their young against a passing human:

Black Woodpecker (Dendrocopus major), foraging to feed chicks that I didn’t manage to capture in this picture:

These species all have identical or near-identical sexes who share in raising the young, in contrast to the many bird species in which males are flashier and contribute less at the nest than females.