What does it mean to you, birdies, to run in a mixed flock? What are you getting out of it? Who are these other birds, to you? I’ve seen pics of caracaras that get a black vulture buddy. Similar sized birds of prey that look extremely different from each other. Caracaras have a rep for being smarter than the average raptor, and maybe that includes an unusual amount of social flexibility? Then there’s escaped budgies flying with the starlings… It’s intriguing.
Less remarkable is when the birds look extremely similar, like when goldfinches fly with pine siskins, or are just a drab pair in general. The first time I saw ruddy turnstones and surfbirds together, I assumed they were the male and female of the same species. They were identical, save coloration. I took some notes the old-fashioned way, may still have been using a flip-phone at the time, and remember one species had yellow-green legs like pencils, and the other had bright carrot orange legs. Do I remember anything else about their appearances, in shades of brown black and white like 99% of other shorebirds? Not at all. I remembered them long enough to make the ID and then lost the memory.
We had gone to Ocean Shores on the Pacific coast of Washington state around the time of my birthday. I got a fat chocolate cake which felt pretty cool. That was the occasion when I saw brown pelicans looking like pterosaurs, saw their long skinny wing feathers amid the kelp on the shore. There was a spit, a kind of rock wall heading out into the water, and on that spit I saw a bunch of shorebirds flying from spot to spot, gleaning food from the rocks. Shorebirds can be very hard to see in field environments or at distance, because their coloration is effectively cryptic. Bold black and white head markings break up shape, skinny legs are like blades of grass. These guys were highly visible on the rocks, some with black and white markings kinda bold under the wings in flight. So I crawled out there and got a closer look, which was a good time for me.
Sometimes a post will make me think of a song, and I link the yewchoob video for it. The only ones that jumped out at me were Queen’s “Friends Will Be Friends” and Dionne Warwick’s “That’s What Friends Are For,” and I low-key hate both of those songs (as much as i <3 4eva other things on the Highlander soundtrack). I often suggest topics of discussion and people seldom bite, but here goes: What unusual animal friendships have you witnessed?
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Ornithologists think that surfbirds (Calidris, formerly in the monotypic genus Aphriza) and turnstones (Arenaria) are sufficiently distinct to be placed in separate genera. They are placed in the same subfamily.
I’ve been surprised recently that the group of goldfinches (maybe ten adults?) that seem to be all raising a few fledglings (maybe five or six?) are happy letting the great tits hang out with them. I’ve seen them hang out together in winter before, but not noticed them doing it in summer. The fledglings mostly potter around on the ground, holding their wings out a bit and opening their beaks if an adult comes down, the adults meanwhile are busy stuffing their beaks with sunflower seeds to eat and to take down to the fledglings. Generally the great tits seem happy to leave the sunflower seed feeder to the finches and concentrate on the peanuts, but the adults are all also rotating in and out of the bushes where they are totally cool with each other.
jazz – i heard some tits are hella pugnacious, so that is interesting.
stew – i did read a lil of the wikis, and one of the pics shows these two birds in a mixed flock with yet another species.
Planning to do boobies next?
(Bright feet!)
they are cool, but the name of the series is “life list,” and i’ve never seen them.
Ah. Missed that. Ta.