Pigeon babies

Most people have seen a baby bird or two. They may fledge a bit early and sloppily make their way across your yard, or better still, maybe their n00b parents build a nest in a flowerpot on your porch or something. Pigeons, on the other hand, are very good at hiding their babies. This is mainly because they like to nest in crevices, or, lacking a nice cliff, the earthquake retrofitting gaps in freeway concrete. I was lucky enough to find a pigeon nest in the eaves of the Lake Merritt nature center and I attempted to document it, with limited success.

I knew that it must be around time for the baby pigeon(s) to hatch, so every few days I would check back at the nest to see if I could see any action. Usually, though, the nest would be unoccupied. If I hung around for a bit, I would see two pigeons, also nonchalantly hanging around, whistling and looking the other way...

A recent study indicated that mockingbirds can recognize individual humans who mess with their nests. I wonder if pigeons can do the same?

Anyway, I FINALLY caught one in the act, lasciviously regurgitating crop milk right in public. Yes, that blurry yellow thing on the right is the baby.

Well, I couldn't get any good pictures of the developing baby, but luckily, Wikipedia has some. And boy are they gross. Baby pigeons are even freakier than other baby birds, due to the developing cere, or "freaky bump on top"! What is that thing for? I'll get back to you.

Later, when Pigeon Jr. was almost ready to leave the nest, I got some better shots:


Check the landing gear...
Check the tail flaps...
...warm up the wings... and...

...FLAPPITY!
Uhm, yeah. False alarm. I'm not flying anywhere just yet.

Growing Pains: The luckiest dreamers who never quit dreaming, and also weren't eaten by seagulls.

The goose babies are growing older! They've entered their awkward teenager phase, and they look just as gangly and rumpled as any other adolescent...

At this phase, just like human teenagers, some embarrasing anatomical secrets are showing--in the picture below you can see the ear opening (which is usually covered over by feathers).

I wouldn't be surprised if their voices cracked too...

This baby is showing off a very sassy wing position. Barbeque sauce sold separately.

Also like human teens, the babies are developing at different rates. This one has a fully grown in tail, but the wing feathers of a child:

...while this baby's tail is still growing in, but the primaries (those not-very-visible white lines on its side) seem to be going strong, and on its face you can see the goose equivalent of peach fuzz--the developing white chinstrap. AWKWARD!

Also like middle schoolers, they hang out in giant cliques.



And to finish off the baby update, here's a cast member of Ducks: the next generation

Ectoparasites, or Animals doing undignified things

Humans are lucky in that we are mostly parasite free. If we do happen to get infested with tiny insect fascists, we can simply pick them out with tweezers, wash them out with shampoo, or defeat them with the help of the Russians.

Animals are not quite as nimble when it comes to eliminating political parties, but they do have a few tricks to deal with skin parasites. Basically, they keep themselves clean with nature's hairbrush: their mouths.

And sometimes they have to use nature's face-scratcher...


...and then we can laugh at them.


Seriously though, grooming is a big deal for birds and mammals, and I'm hoping to eventually do a more detailed post about parasites, grooming, and all the things birds learn about in the middle school locker room.

Natural Death, She Wrote

A retired English teacher with an insatiable curiosity... where Murder is concerned. Whenever she walks around Glen Echo Cove, dead bodies inevitably materialize. Usually first detected by their powerful smell, they often yield intriguing clues as to their demise.

This rat, for instance, was covered in half-healed scabs... and ants. While the evil marauding ants are the obvious culprit, closer inspection reveals that the ants are innocent! The gesture of the forepaws, as though the rat is trying to block something terrible from its vision, indicate that this rat died from overexposure to a That's So Raven marathon.

Here, a seagull is discovered face down in the brine. Probable cause of death: Underwater Head Syndrome.

The leisurely walk concludes with a stop at the scenic docks. But what's this? Has this seagull been presented with a cement shoe retirement gift from the Lake Merritt Mafia?

Closer examination and a thorough questioning reveal the culprit and the murder weapon are one and the same.
Yes, it was Naked Barbie, on the pier, with the Naked Barbie. Who would have expected the murderer to be this week's guest star!? I *knew* it wasn't Professor Plum!

Duck-on-duck-on-duck action

I caught these domestic ducks illustrating a word that rhymes with duck.


Run! Run to jump on the pile!

They don't even seem to care who's on the bottom.

Too bad there isn't a bird that rhymes with "orgy."

Speaking of sex with ducks, Tom found an entertaining music video about that very topic. It rhymes "puddle" and "cuddle," and like ducks themselves, it's cool with gay marriage.

From the embryonic whale... to the pigeon with no tail

Notice anything weird about this pigeon?

Maybe this will help:


Poor little thing has lost its tail feathers somehow, so it's been relegated to the bird dome. Without a tail, it can't seem to balance, and so it spends its time falling back onto its butt, and flapping upright again. It would be laughable if it wasn't so pitiable!

Brown Blurry Birds 2

I think there are a lot of fledglings out this time of year, floppily learning when to flee from nosy humans with cameras. This phoebe, happily, didn't seem to fear me:






Parents of fledglings are getting distracted too. I was walking in the garden when I heard a persistent cheeping coming from somewhere nearby. Turns out it was this little towhee with its mouth stuffed full of bug.

Was it bribing a fledgling to get off of Facebook and get some fresh air, out of the nest? I couldn't locate any other birds around, but given how hidden this one was, I wouldn't be surprised if I missed part of this story. Anyway it kept calling from this one spot, bug in beak, for several minutes. "Mmph! Mm mmmph!"

Here's another towhee chirping with glee as it triumphantly blocks me from getting a shot that isn't backlit:


I was also able to locate this chickadee from its calls. Sometimes you just hear them going nuts in the trees. This was either a confused baby that hadn't learned that low hanging tree branches are unsafe...

Or a parent bird trying to decoy me away from its precious babies. It worked, because I sure couldn't find the nest...

Finally, here is a slightly better picture of a goldfinch than the last one I took.

Squirrel Comedy

Hey squirrel! Whatcha lookin' for there on that fence?

Signs of summer: "molten" geese, but no hot lava

As if to flaunt the fact that feathers are unique to them, birds use their feathers almost constantly, mostly to fly away from people who are jealous of their featheriness and trying to take some for themselves. Although feathers are durable, all that evasive action takes its toll, and eventually the feathers get all ratty. The edges fray and the fibers don't clump together so well anymore. Birds that get their food from the local sandpaper factory need to replace their feathers constantly, but for most birds, the process happens one or two times a year. Some birds molt into and out of breeding plumage, like renting a tux for prom night. Others look the same before and after, replacing a few worn feathers at a time until they have an all new set.

Ducks and geese undergo "synchronous molting," which is something like going on What Not to Wear, where they throw all your old clothes away into a giant trash can, your closet is empty, and you feel Very Cranky. Geese take about two to three weeks to fill the metaphorical trash can with their old feathers, but you can bet that they are also Very Cranky while it's happening.

Each summer, the number of geese at the lake increases from a few hundred to almost 2,000, according to surveys by the Lake Merritt Institute. They come seeking to leave their gloppy green poop on our clean sidewalks. Also they need a safe place to hang out while Stacey and Clinton pick out their new outfits for them.

How can you tell if a goose is molting, or how likely it is to hiss at you and make fun of your glasses to hide its insecurity about being flightless? An easy way is to look at the butt. A goose which has shed its primaries will have a fully visible tail, and you can also see a white butt stripe as the goose shakes its booty. Two of the geese in the picture below are of the extra cranky no-primaries variety. The third goose, closest to the camera, has already grown new primaries, and they come to a point above the tail, giving its butt a kind of 1950s pointy Maidenform bra look.

Another way to tell whether a goose's feathers have that not-so-fresh feeling is to look at the color at the edge. A new feather will be uniformly dark; an old feather will have a pale and raggedy edge. You might have to click the picture below to see, but like a well-loved stuffed animal that is about to become Real, this goose has some ratty secondaries (and some new primaries).
Some geese have problems as young birds: their wingbones distort and their feathers grow in all crazy. This disease is optimistically called "Angel Wing" and is believed to occur when developing youngsters eat too much protein, e.g. Cool Ranch Doritos. Another argument against feeding birds human food...

Such birds are sad to watch, but overall their chances of survival at the lake are probably better than elsewhere--with islands to hide on and entire lawns of grass to eat, it's practically as cushy as a Motel 6.

And, as you'll see in the next post, there's WAY more hanky panky at the lake than in a lousy old motel!

Hybrid Love!

Remember earlier when I wrote about the domestic-Canada goose hybrid pair? Well, it looks like they may have had some success in the baby department:

But wait! A THIRD goose is accompanying them as well! Which of these geese is genetically responsible for the babies? Until they make it onto an episode of Goose's Court, where Judge Goosy can require a paternity test, only they will know for sure!
Multiple adults caring for offspring is not uncommon in the bird world. (And in fact, not too long ago I posted about the group of 6-8 geese that seemed to be raising their goslings all together...) Sometimes one of the adults is a pair's child from a previous year. Other times, unrelated adults form cooperative groups. Recent studies that analyze the DNA of the young of supposedly monogamous pairs indicate that having a little something on the side is actually quite common in birds. More than half of a given clutch could be somebody else's! So, it's a strong possibility that this group of goslings are all candidates for My Two Dads. Either way, the young of such a group benefit from the extra Wii games and candy bars provided by a bonus relative.

Speaking of hybrids, I spotted this shocking scene taking place inside the Bird Dome:

Domestic-on-wild mallard action! But WAIT. That distinctive green head and yellow beak of the bottom duck signify a mallard--a MALE! Shouldn't he be on top? What's going on here exactly?

We can't know the sex of the white duck for sure, but cases of male-on-male duck action are documented in Blue Ducks and also, believe it or not, in alive-on-dead mallards, so this scenario is not that implausible. Some studies suggest that animals in captivity are more likely to engage in same sex coupling, perhaps as a stress release, possibly due to a shortage of the preferred sex, or because they're bored since they don't have cable in there. Or maybe they just like it that way.

Want more detail? Try this article from Scientific American:
Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom

As a side note, I installed Google analytics on my blog and found that I got the most hits on the day I posted the pigeon money shot. Wonder if this post will cause another spike? I might even reach a record *13* page views!