Howdy folks! Even with Brad’s help I am running behind this month. Having been gone nearly the first three weeks of April and now heading out to St. Louis for a few days so Linda can compete in the Poodle Nationals at Purina Farms, I’m a few posts behind. Trying to get at least one more in while I am waiting for some glue to dry on this year’s signature Halloween prop – a piece that is definitely ending up to be a lot more effort than initially imagined. Cue Linda eye roll “Every one of your projects turns out more than you expected!!!!” True, but most of the time … in the end…”wooooorttthhhh IT” ha (like in this link here). We’ll see how this is going a few months down the road. For now, will try to clear the head of glue fumes and bring you an incredible feathered feature of the day.
Don’t worry, if you hit the jump I’ll get you closer to our feature.
Yeah, I know, I promised you that in the last post and I brought you a grey cloud of a bird. For the record, that little guy/gal got a lot more appreciation that initially expected. This time I am bringing the color with one of the latest checks in the life list.
Well, that was what I thought. Another tin from our latest trip to Vegas turns out to NOT be a plus one. That is twice in a row that I have been super stoked in the field to witness what I thought was a new bird only to find out minutes before starting the post that the species tag was already in my WordPress history. Must be experiencing some bad juju that is messing with my memory. This one was also first covered back in October 2014 (link here) from a trip in 2012 to .. you guessed it.. Vegas. New readers may be puzzled over the 2 year gap – long story, an alien abduction resulted in my multi-year backlog – you’ll get used to it ha.
Although not technically a new bird to the blog, I am bringing the color in this one. No more grey on grey washed with grey for my readers. Today I’m coming at ya’ with … well… grey, but it now comes partnered with vibrant blues and oranges at least on the Western Bluebird males. The first few shots above feature the female which we will get back to in just a bit. I led with those due to the interesting gnarly wood perch.
There we go, that’s the beautiful coloring of the male I was promising. For those of you on the eastern half of the US (and down into Central America) you may be thinking to yourself – that’s and EASTERN Bluebird. Trust me, I was right with you before I learned about this Western cousin. This subspecies hangs out primarily in the west (thanks to an excellent roll of the decahedron die I got a +2 intelligence boost with that statement). Our friends in New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona get to enjoy Mr. and Mrs. Little Boy Blue as well.
The Eastern and the Western regions thankfully do not overlap much at least in the US. Unfortunately, those in Central America will have to put more effort into sorting them out as they are fairly close in their coloring. For the males, you can distinguish them by the head and shoulder coloring. Easterns have an orange throat where the Westerns have a solid blue throat. This would have been a good time for the bird naming orgs to have gone with Blue-Throated Bluebird to help us in the field – granted it would cause some confusion with the females. In my defense, they didn’t seem to care about that with the Black-Throated Green Warbler.
The other clue is the Western males have chestnut on their shoulders where the Easterns carry the same blue coloring through the entirety of their upper bodies. If you are fortunate to witness a male, those two clues will win you respect and field cred with friends and family. Now when it comes to the females..you will need to work a little harder.
I had intended to feature this series before switching to the Juniper for the last post. Reason is, I wanted to do some additional validation on the female coloring. Not just whether she was an Eastern or a Western, but a completely different species all together. This will become clearer in my next post.
I find the Eastern and Western females to be nearly identical. Per my previous post on the Eastern (link here), you will notice, similar to the female here, they have a duller wash of coloring. Very typical in the birding world. The throat turns out to be a key feature here as well. Westerns have a grey (there’s that color again) throat where the Easterns have more of a light orange tint which carries up the side of the neck. Beyond that they can be cast in Parent Trap.
It may just be this particular couple we encountered, but the male pretty much just sat there smug in its Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. “In a class above the rest, it even went well with his vest, such a stunning coat of many colours”. The female, she wasn’t exactly pleased with us invading her domain.
She kept a watchful eye on us and would flit from stump to tree to shrub and back. A bit early to be nesting so doubtful she was trying to draw us away from a nest. Maybe the barrel of The Beast just triggered a bad flashback from the jungles of ’69. Not wanting to stress it anymore, we moved ahead on the trail. Just as we were about to make it out of sight, she popped onto a perfectly lit bush. Had to take that shot.
Turned out to be my favorite shot of the series – the variety of gold tones really compliment the subdued coloring of the bird. I think this one will be going to print when we get back from St. Louis (after toning down some of the hotspots). That is the only shot I got then, she quickly took off to be with her mate.
Hope you enjoyed our little blue friends from the West. Oops, almost forgot. This series was taken at Desert National Wildlife Refuge. That is a wonderful place if you have never been there. Not too far from Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Highly recommend bring a 4×4 if you really want to explore that massive refuge. I’ll cover that more in the upcoming post.
For now, take care and wish Brad luck on tinning his out of state assignment bird.
Life Intrigued 