Howdy folks, hope you are feeling a little more rested than I am at the moment. We are closing in on this year’s haunted trail event and time is becoming a precious commodity. My brother Ron was able to come down last weekend and help get the trail season jumpstarted. We build/fix/buy props year round here at Intrigued, but there are always projects that are lagging for one reason or another – primarily due to nonstop rain lately. With the added help we can hopefully get those over the finish line before we transition into grooming the trail and preparing props for the haul down into the valley (fingers crossed it dries out from all the flooding). The event is the last weekend in September which is the earliest I think we have ever held the haunt. Something tells me I am going to wish I had that extra week from the previous years…also going to wish I didn’t have injuries on my left hand – middle finger knuckle has been “obliterated” and today I decided to see how much pain I can endure by absolutely smashing the tip of my pinky on the same hand – eh, “The show must go on” as they say ha. Just as a heads up, I will be “sparse” from this point on due to the extra time required for the trail..oh, and I still have that little ultra thingy to do in October, so any spare time will be pounding long miles out. Fortunately, I like the challenge…which brings us to today’s featured feathered friend.
I generally consider myself fairly decent in the field when it comes to these feathered creatures…yet this particular specimen..technically specimens had me stumped. Go ahead and take a quick guess at what you think this particular species is and I’ll see you on the other side of the jump.
Guessing there are a few of you out there that are currently laughing at my ineptitude. Maybe there are some of you that are confused as I was when I spotted this bird from our Colorado trip back in 2024.
I know, I know, that was a while ago and my backlog is well lamented. Unlike most of the time, this lag is more intentional than a post-effect of an overly aggressive shutter finger. In fact it was actually processed last year while grounded recovering from ankle surgery. Note, it is becoming apparent that this has been a rough couple of years on the medical front – aging Bumbles apparently do not “bounce” as much.
When this series came up in the digital darkroom, I distinctly recalled the encounter. Linda and I were camping at Bear Creek Lake Park in Lakewood Colorado (link here). That September, we were heading to the Teacup Dog Agility Nationals near Loveland and Linda planned out a way for us to get a quick birding outing at Red Rocks Ampitheatre – one of my favorite places to bird in the US. Bear Creek is right near there and she booked a campsite there without knowing much about it. Summary – A FANTASTIC PARK!! Exceptional birding trails and if you are an ultra runner, the Mt Carbon Loop is a good test to see what condition you “think” you are in.
I happened to be walking the trail that follows the actual Bear Creek when the sight of this specimen caught my eye. Rifled through my mental Bird ID Quicksort (a shout out to you career IT readers out there ha), and found myself cycling between different paths. The straight brown head first steered me to a female Asshat (link here), yet that bill was way out of place for that species. Climbed back up the sort tree and came up with a female Red-Winged Blackbird with those sharp feather edges on the back and a slightly more fitting bill. No buffy line above the eye or yellowish wash around the bill…not to mention they tend to have a more mottled look to them. This sort isn’t going so well, pop a few nodes off that path and then I found myself down the spotted look branch that eventually dropped me into the European Starling option – I knew the Starling males and females look similar and the ones I was familiar with tend to be more iridescent in their wings, darker (blackish) overall tone with some degree of green/purple highlights and a yellow bill. At least the bill shape looked dead on beyond that, a head scratcher for me.
Now before you start hurling your Monty Python taunts at me (link here), there is one more bit of behavior that caught me off guard. This specimen flew down to a Western Meadowlark that was perched on a log working the creek waters. Oh, and not just the one specimen, another one flew in from a previously hidden spot in the same tree. Now I have two of these bizarre creatures next to a species I did know…and I also knew that those plain brown heads and spotted chests were NOT typical of the Meadowlark young.
Now I was captivated. For the next 20 minutes or so I watched as these three birds essentially “played” together. They would grab various objects out of the water (guessing some insect) and basically pass it back and forth between them like a hot potato. Was the Meadowlark trying to teach it how to hunt, was it really an ASSHAT and they were unfortunate united…. I even looked around for a potential local birder that might have the answer to my confusion without luck.
Eventually the two spotted specimens left together and then a young Western Meadowlark came down and joined the first Meadowlark.
After spending extra time once the series was processed, I came to the following conclusion. Note, if you have other thoughts please let me know in the comments and we can learn together! The specimens in question are likely juvenile European Starlings. This was the very first time I had ever seen these youngsters in the wild. After staring at Cornell’s reference picks which has multiple iterations of juveniles – none of which looks exactly like these specimens – thinking they are nearing their transition to adult plumage and thus the tan head paired with the buffer spots on the back and the more defined spots throughout the chest. A quick look confirmed the European Starlings are NOT a predation species so the forced union options is likely out.
There is the possibility of hybrids in which case I tend to slap my money on the counter and declare “I’m out” unless its “Smudge” (link here), the hybrid at the National Butterfly Center that I am very familiar with. Quite the learning experience and a new sort order path for my internal ID process – a great day in the field!
Time to get back to the haunt lab. Linda is also probably tired of me wincing and cursing every time I have to spell a word with an A, Q, Z, C D or E in it. Thanks for dropping in.
Life Intrigued 