Iridescence of a Hummingbird

Costa's Hummingbird, taken at Indian Wells today, Oct 28, 2012

I have never seen this species of hummingbird before. I chanced upon it in the grounds of the hotel where I was staying this weekend. It is a desert bird, named after a French ornithologist. Like all hummingbirds, the male has a spectacular metallic sheen to the feathers in its head and gorget. 

Why do they look so cool? 

The following is taken from asknature.org: 

"To summarize, hummingbird iridescence is due to interference colors produced by a stack of about three films whose optical thickness is one-half the peak wave length. Each film is a mosaic of platelets of elliptical form. Each platelet is about 2.5 microns long and one micron wide. The platelets are not homogeneous and consist of air bubbles encased in a matrix of refractive index about two." (Greenewalt et al. 1960:253)

Greenewalt CH; Brandt W; Friel DD. 1960. The iridescent colors of hummingbird feathers. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 104: 249-253. 

Seeking for that bird

(Say's Phoebe at Madrona Marsh, Oct 14, 2012)

I came across these beautiful lines in an essay by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Lantern Bearers:

"There is one fable that touches very near the quick of life: the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found himself on his return a stranger at his convent gates; for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognise him. It is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he is native there. He sings in the most doleful places. The miser hears him and chuckles, and the days are moments... All life that is not merely mechanical is spun out of two strands: seeking for that bird and hearing him. And it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and the delight of each so incommunicable."

Urban owl

Exciting night! I was just about to sleep when I heard a western screech owl just outside the bedroom window! Much to the amazement of the bird expert who alerted me to it, it had been recently spotted in our neighborhood just this past month by another birder.

What makes this is so unusual is that these owls normally live only in the woods up in the mountains in L.A., away from people and urban areas. You can see this clearly in the map of reported sightings that I captured from ebird.org; my report from last night is the lonely one in orange near Beverly Hills. Blue reports are older; the one closest to it in blue dates back to 1949! The expert had said "I suppose it is a dispersing hatch-year bird looking for a place to settle in."

I didn't get a good look at the bird, but got to see it fly out of the tree it was in (outside my immediate neighbor's backdoor). Having never seen one before, I was surprised to see it was quite small, only about 8 inches or so.

Oh, and I could record its soft calls that are comprised of a rapid series of "bouncing ball" whistles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aoXS_C5SbA&feature=plcp

Mottled wit

On this warm september saturday, we were sitting on the sand, by the lagoon, eyeing this elegant bird methodically probing and digging with its long pointed beak. I told my nine-year-old its name. He responded, quick as a fox, sharp as a needle,  "Ah, a Marbled God-I-had-it-wit-you!" 

This bird is featured in a lovely song by the folk band The Bowerbirds in their album "Hymns for a Dark Horse", which I mean to listen to more of:

Just as I suspected...

Was Hafiz a birder too?

A little wren

Among the dwellings framed by birds
In field or forest with nice care,
Is none that with the little Wren's
In snugness may compare.

   --- from A Wren's Nest by William Wordsworth


This little House Wren has made our backyard its home. It flits from bush to bush, and makes a variety of sounds from singing in beautifully bubbly bursts to a harsh scolding chatter. 

I am thrilled to see this musical bird just outside our backdoor, but then.. I see this article about them: http://www.sialis.org/wrens.htm

It warns, ominously: 

They have been known to destroy bluebird and other cavity nester's eggs by piercing them (holes of 3 mm or less, or a large ragged hole in the middle), and then often removing them from the nest. They can remove an entire chickadee nest in a matter of hours. In one study in eastern MA, 20% of Black-capped Chickadee nests were destroyed by House Wrens. Althea Sherman reported that House Wrens destroyed eggs of 29 different birds. House Wrens may even displace the uncommon Bewick's Wren.

Then again, we don't have other cavity nesting birds around here that I know of...

Swift Impressions

Common Swift (click to see individual images)

Common swifts are the fastest recorded birds in level flight, known to reach speeds close to 70mph flying horizontally, even upwards. They can eat, sleep, even mate on the wing, flying more than 500 miles each day.  

I was thrilled to see and hear them at close range in Rome and had the chance to take a few pics. I like how they appear in duo-tone; someone called these images "bird calligraphy."