To describe my lifelong fascination with flight and with creatures that fly I like to echo the words of John James Audubon who in 1839 wrote of himself as "...one who never can cease to admire and to study with zeal and the most heartfelt reverence, the wonderful productions of an Almighty Creator."
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Odd Junco
Among the aberrations we see in birds' plumages, albinism or leucism is perhaps one of the more interesting, or at least eyecatching. Recently some friends sent me these photos of what appears to be a Junco with a lot of white in its wing, rump and tail feathers, and a very unusual appearance of its normally dark-hooded head. It's almost odd enough to raise some doubt about it even being a Junco.
Yesterday at Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast some gulls were attracted to the sight of bread crumbs being thrown out on the deck of a beach house. Suddenly among the flurry of wings there was a pair of much larger wings as an adult Brown Pelican came in to claim a share of the crumbs. I was surprised to see a Pelican eating bread, and was made to wonder if there might be a shortage of a Pelican's usual food in the ocean along this coast.
