Category: Birding

Wood Stork

Wood Stork
Photo: Inge Curtis

Compared to the handsome storks of Europe in Hans Christian Andersen’s story and those that carried us in a natal cradle, American Wood Storks look like old countrymen with bald, wrinkly heads exposed to too much sun. A featherless head is more hygienic for dipping into muddy wetlands, the same as for vultures bobbing in rotting carcasses. Storks and vultures are far more graceful in the air than on the ground, often circling in the same thermal.

Wood Storks are rarities in Virginia, but found year-round in Florida and other south-eastern states during migration. Inge saw this one in Texas.

Songbirds Taste Sweet

Hummingbird feeder

Hummingbirds don’t visit feeders to quench a thirst. They have a taste for sweetness, like us, although different receptors on their tongues (T1R1 + T1R3).

Now, we learn that songbirds taste it too. Several avian ancestors emerging in Australia 30 million years ago evolved it independently (convergent evolution) and kept it as they radiated across the world. The receptor is a modification of the savory receptor (umami), not so surprising considering dinosaur ancestry. Sugar packs calories. That songbirds represent 40% of all birds today suggests the adaptation contributed to their success. That’s a sweet excuse for us to cover embarrassment at a sweet tooth.

Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds
Photos: Inge Curtis

Garden residents in eastern states from April to September they fascinate us, beating wings to a blur as they hover, even trusting us at arm’s reach before flying off, bright as a jewel, straight as a beeline. The only common summer visitor is the Ruby-throated hummer coming to flowerbeds to feed on nectar (love crimson bee-balm), snatch at insects and guzzle at our sugar water feeders.

Inge caught right-hand image of a White-necked Jacobin hummer in Mexico. A larger species of the tropics, it was given a scientific name by a Frenchman called Napoleon (not the Bonaparte) and a common name after the Jacobins for a resemblance I find hard to understand. Members of the Jacobin Club led by Robespierre dressed to distinguish themselves from aristocrats in fancy knee breeches by wearing a red cap and long trousers (sans coulottes).