backyard dinosaur #7

a Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) i saw stealing food from around our mountain OH-lympic venue (cross-country skiing coming soon!)

backyard dinosaur #6 a quick tale...

today's backyard dinosaurs started off as a random bird snap shoot, and turned into an epic tale of life and death and more life...

i spotted a mother mallard duck and her cute little chicks, and was trying to snap some nice shots of them. however mommy duckie did not want me anywhere near her babies. fair enough i guess, but this would lead to the upcoming drama... for despite all the other stuff around us, momma duck decided i was the scariest thing around even though i was just taking pictures from a distance (i love my new 20x zoom camera!), so she missed the greatest threat to her ducklings...

a minute or two after i started following the ducks, a magpie showed up, and started hovering VERY close by mamma duck and her ducklings. the magpie (i think a female as well... my reasoning for this will be clear at the end) was acting very predatory. i would know too... if you don't believe me just look at its stance in my picture here, not too hard to imagine a raptor looking the same way before a kill!

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moments after i took this picture (seriously a second at most!) the magpie pounced one of the ducklings, grabbed it by the neck and flew off with it. mamma sort of tried to defend it, but because she'd been so busy worrying about me, she was in the wrong spot and couldn't really do anything.

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my first reaction was shock. then i felt sorry for the poor duckling, and by extension its mother who was now clearly very stressed and confused.

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i quickly came to see the magpies as evil, and watching around me the villains were everywhere. the commotion caused by the ducknapping had empowered every magpie in the area, and half a dozen of them were now making plays to try and grab their own baby birds.

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less than a minute after the duckling incident i snapped this picture of a canadian goose warding off a probing magpie (the gooslings can be seen just behind the goose). the blighters were everywhere.

i was beginning to really side with all the poor water fowl, when wandering around the bend of the pond i encountered the cause of the magpies actions...

the magpies had their own chicks. they to were mammas and their offspring themselves needed food. despite the ducklings and gooslings not being nicest source, they were providing for these baby magpies...

i suddenly had a new respect for the event i had witnessed. there was no good guys or bad guys. the duck wasn't necessarily a victim. both sides had needs and wants, and though these may infringe on the others, they were both entitled to try and meet them.

so despite the poor duckling giving up its life, its death had allowed the next generation of magpies to carry on (at least for now...).

the cycle of life, i think one might call this.

backyard dinosaur #5

man oh man... i've fallen way behind on my posts!

all i can say is when you see the results of the first round of the OH-lympic ice hockey and the aftermath, you'll understand why i haven't been able to post as much as i'd been hoping too... stay tuned!

getting myself back on track here is july's installment of backyard dinosaurs (yes i know its supposed to be weekly, but we've run out of those)...



a steller's jay (Cyanocitta stelleri) i saw hanging the mountains of vancouver.

backyard dinosaurs #4

today's backyard dinosaurs focuses on diversity...


while looking out at the bird feeder today i saw a whole bunch of different types of birds. from left to right was a house sparrow (Passer domesticus), ruby-crowned kinglet (Regulus calendula), and purple finch (Carpodacus purpureus).

this got me thinking to how many different birds live together in just the yard! you'd think in such a small space they won't have enough different things to eat or roles to play. yet even just in my bird feeder they were all able to find different seeds to eat, and each went about eating them their own way! (the kinglet wouldn't have been able to eat if not for the sparrow kicking lots of seed out of the feeder for example... where the finch was able to do its own thing regradless of the other two).

so next time your out and about look at all the different birds that live in the same area, and thing about how they all coexist and interact with one another!

backyard dinosaur #3

a cute little mountain chickadee (Poecile gambeli) (or at least i think that is what it is), i saw flittering around the figure skating venue.

backyard dinosaur #2 (delayed)

okay, enough is enough traumador! this is the second time this year i've let my weekly dose of birds fall behind. the OH-lympics have been tying me up a lot more than i thought they would!

so again on with my revamped bird segment. all focusing on scott sampson's concept of "backyard dinosaurs".

this time around i spotted this rather pretty great blue heron (Ardea herodias) while wandering around vancouver harbour.

today's backyard dinosaur challenge is try to spot a bird everywhere you go... i think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find our avian friends are ever present (unless your a deep sea driver or an astronaut :P)

Backyard Dinosaur #1

i've been a bad little dinosaur. i haven't been keeping up with my cousin of the week feature. not just for a little while. for a whole four months!
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so rather than be dishonest about keeping up with that project, i'm going to reboot it into a new format. after hearing a talk by Dr. Scott Sampson, i've been really enamoured with his concept of birds being "backyard dinosaurs". so that's what i'm going to call my bird feature of the week from now. (as for my encounter with dr. sampson, stay tuned it's coming up in the olympics!)
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our first backyard dinosaur is this little downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens). i found it due to the rhythmic taps its beak made on the telephone pole , as it tried to bore through the dead wood to get at some insect or insect larva borrowing inside.

(as a big part of dr. sampson's message about backyard dinosaurs is for people to try and discover lessons from nature in our own lives... i'm going to include a small backyard challenge for you each week. if you have a great backyard discovery tell us about it in the comment section!)

backyard challenge:

take 5 minutes one day and watch what sorts of birds come into your backyard and which parts and things in your yard they make use of.

i bet you'll be amazed at how adaptive all those birds are, and just how things in your backyard they make use of. human made or natural! my woodpecker was making heavy use of that phone pole, something we usually take for granted everyday as a people thing, not used by nature at all...