Dendroica caerulescens

[vaneramos]

A bird in the hand is worth a thousand words, especially when it comes to photographing them with a basic digital camera without fancy lenses. After complaining to androkles about my inability to photograph our North American birds to show off to him, I had an opportunity yesterday.

It was a big bird day for me, as Jon drove me on my annual route to collect data for the Breeding Bird Survery. We had to get out of bed at 4 a.m. and spend four hours driving 40 km, with me hopping out of the car every so often to look, listen and write down what I observed. I counted about 52 species.

After we got back to the cottage, Jon went back to bed. That is when this lovely fellow hit a window and I had a chance to snap some photographs.

Without rival, wood warblers are the feathered jewels of eastern North American forests. The black-throated blue warbler, Dendroica caerulescens, is one of the most striking. As you can see, he is barely as long as my middle finger.

Only minutes before the accident I had heard his raspy song in the undergrowth. I found him lying on his back, his left eyeball grossly distented with blood. I didn't think he would survive. But he seemed alert when I held him on my palm, and swallowed some drops of water from my finger. He sat for more than an hour on a table on the porch, but when I went to pick him up again, he flew and perched on a branch overhead. An hour later he had vanished. Whether he will live long with such a bad head injury, and obviously blind in one eye, I don't know. But birds are much tougher than they seem.

Black-throated blue warblers nest in undergrowth on the forest floor. The female is mostly brown but has the same white wing patch. They are common, but still a treat to the eye.

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, the biodiversity around our cottage is awesome. I started compiling a list of species I have identified just on or near our property over the years. So far I have done birds (76 species) and woody plants (44) (The list is here if anyone is actually enough of a natural history junkie to want to read it.) I want to start listing herbaceous plants, but it will be a monumental task, just counting the ones I already know.

[poetbear.livejournal.com]

he is a tiny beauty, Van. thanks for
posting the picture. birds ARE tougher
than they look, for sure. remember, they
are lizards with feathers.
~paul

[jaique.livejournal.com]

This is just too cool. Birds are something I wish I knew a whole lot more about.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Um, the image of you gently feeding an injured little bird drops of water from your finger is incredibly sweet. I suppose my urban intellectual cynic ought to mark it as a cliche and laugh, but instead I find myself hoping the little thing survives, and very happy you were there to aid it.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Death is part of the big cycle. I'm not overly sentimental about rescuing small, fuzzy thing, although if he dies I will miss his wheazy little song in the dense woods behind the cottage. I'm happy if my attention did him any good. I did raise a baby bird when I was a teenager, and that is one the interesting chapters from my life.

It could be said I'm more sentimental when it comes to hand-feeding larger animals.

[art-thirst.livejournal.com]

Totally awesome. The iridescence of the feathers is something that amazes me.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's something I would like to know, what causes iridescence. Most warblers don't have it; I didn't realize how iridescent this species is until I saw it up close. The blue feathers have a wonderful silver sheen.

[art-thirst.livejournal.com]

Maybe the iridescence in the image is an illusion but, I think it's real. I was reading about that in Minnesota because my friend has a hummingbird feeder and I didn't see any this time. My friend has a large library of books in the cabin on general wildlife, birds, fish, plants, flowers, Minnesota history, his family history, a bunch of children's books, maps, guides, and even more. We were identifying various hawks driving back to Minneapolis with me comparing the undersides and legs to similar ones found in Florida that do not inhabit MN. Anway, here's something on hummingbirds that might explain the coloration.

"No other bird possesses such a wide spectrum of breathtaking colors as the hummingbird. This is due to the structure of the feathers. While most birds can attribute their color to pigmentation, the hummingbird's shimmering color is structural rather than pigmented in origin. The iridescent colors of the feathers arise from layers of special cells within the top layers of the feathers. Light that hits these cells is broken apart; some wavelengths are reinforced and intensified, while others are nullified through interference. The resulting colors are amazingly vivid, but, unlike pigmented colors, can be seen only when the light is hitting the feathers at precisely the right angle. Thus, a hummingbird can shift its position just a little, and what was once black will become blazing red."

"The brilliant, iridescent colors of hummingbird plumage are caused by the refraction of incident light by the structures of certain feathers. Like any diffraction grating or prism, these structures split light into its component colors, and only certain frequencies are refracted back to the viewer. The apparent color of any particular part of a feather depends upon the distance between the microscopic ridges in its gridlike structure. The resulting colors are much more vivid and iridescent than those of birds with only pigmented feathers. Not all hummer colors are due to feather structure, however; the duller, rusty browns of Allen's and Rufous Hummingbirds are the result of pigmentation. Iridescent hummingbird colors actually result from a combination of refraction and pigmentation, since the diffraction structures themselves are made of melanin, a pigment." quoted from the web

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that is fascinating!

The iridescence in the image is not an illusion. I only meant that I had never noticed it on one of these birds before I held one in my hand yesterday. And in this case the iridescence is all a silvery-white overlaying deep blue.

[ruralrob.livejournal.com]

Lovely!

[avad.livejournal.com]

poor lil guy. so beautiful...a million thanks for sharing.