Travels with Howie

March 10,2020

I have never seen a stranger looking bird than the Roseate Spoonbill and I am sorry that I don't have a better photo than this to show you.  Sometimes we see one or two on  a small pond  but yesterday we saw these on a strip of land in the middle of a large area of shallow water.  They are a really ugly bird up close but from a distance, the bright pink color is so pretty.  Up close you can see  a large patch of yellow around the eye,  white neck, black on the back of the head and grayish bill with some darkish  stripes on a bill  that looks like someone pounded  it flat.    They really look like a small  child  designed and colored them


Image from the internet..the rest are my photos

Anyway,  it occurred to me to  write a little about peculiarities of some of the birds that I have photos of.  I know, that is ending a sentence with a preposition.😧

  

White Ibis.  Legend says it is the last to leave before a hurricane strikes and the first to return.  Some also believe that it can withstand the winds of a hurricane.         

The golden fronted woodpecker can eat prickly pear cactus.  Sometimes his face is stained a light purple from it.

Cattle egrets eat insects and can  get 50%  more food and use 2/3 less energy by following cattle and sort of cleaning up  the insects in what remains in the path .   A group of egrets can be called a stampede of egrets.  Seems inappropriate.

Great Blue  Heron:  he has some special feathers on his chest that he combs with a sort of fringed claw.  He uses the feathers he has combed off to clean himself from the slime of the fish and other unpleasant stuff.  He/she also has a special  way of incubating  their eggs by standing on them to keep them warm.

I grew up in a time when it was thought that only man used tools but since that time we have learned that a number of animals do use them including this green jay who sometimes uses a twig to pry bark  loose to get insects underneath.

And finally:a Cardinal.

  There is a saying that if you see a cardinal you are seeing a representative of someone who has passed .  They show up at times when you most miss them or need them. 

I'd like to believe that.