Your Saturday Bird Post:

Black Skimmer

Rynchops niger

Wayaya (Wayampi)

Also Known As

Tayataya (Carib)
Pa’â guasu (Guaraní)
Iwenti (Palikúr)
Corta-Mar (Portuguese)
Rayador (Spanish)

About

A group of Black Skimmers in flight resembles an aerial ballet, circling, banking, and gracefully alighting as one. Although taxonomists place this unique, long-winged waterbird in a separate genus, it’s closely related to gulls and terns.

The Black Skimmer’s most striking feature is its gaudy red-and-black bill: Both jaws are long and narrow like a knife blade, with the lower jutting out well beyond the upper. Its unique appearance lends the Black Skimmer a number of evocative folk names, including Scissor-bill, Cutwater (Cortagua or Corta-agua in South America), and Seadog (after its calls, often compared to dog barks).

This odd bill is what affords these birds their distinctive foraging style, and the name “skimmer.” A feeding skimmer flies low over the water with its beak open and lower mandible partially submerged. Where a broader bill would send a continuous spray of seawater straight down the throat of another species, the uniquely narrow mandible of the skimmer cuts through the water like a fin. When the extended lower mandible touches prey, such as a small fish, the bill’s upper mandible snaps down, securing the bird’s meal.

Another remarkable feature of the Black Skimmer is its eyes, which have large pupils that can narrow to vertical slits, like a cat’s pupils. This adaptation compensates for glare off the water’s surface and may enhance the bird’s vision as it hunts in dim light or at night.

Threats

According to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, Black Skimmers have declined in the United States by almost 90 percent since 1966. This is largely due to habitat loss and human disturbance at nesting colonies. These birds are also affected by oil spills and chemical pollution in coastal waters, and may face additional threats during the breeding season with climate change as sea levels continue to rise. (snip-MORE)

This Week’s “Lay Lines”

It’s a little spewky!

https://www.gocomics.com/lay-lines

Clay Jones, And More!

https://inthesetimes.com/article/new-comics-left-wing-oligarchy-strike-trump-union

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/prophecy

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/debunking

Trump 250

The sycophants in the Treasury Department are trying to make a $250 bill with Trump’s face on it

Clay Jones

US law states that no living president can appear on currency. Yet, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is preparing for Congress to change that and is plowing ahead with plans to create a $250 bill featuring Donald Trump’s face for the 250th anniversary of the country.

Bessent said, “It’s all in the hands of… Capitol Hill. We prepared things in advance… but we will stick to the law.”

For the sycophants that make up the Trump regime, everything is always Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. They gotta put his name on this, put his face on that, repeat, rinse, and repeat. It is starting to get weird. Soon, all US currency will feature Donald Trump’s signature.

Bessent added that he didn’t think there was anything “untoward” about having the president who was in office during the country’s 250th anniversary appear on the bill. In this case, “untoward” means creepy. (snip-MORE)

An Update From Janet!

Returning to Pennsylvania: A Journey of Resilience

OK, Yeah, There’s Still A Bird Post-

It’s Saturday, after all.

Nashville Warbler

Leiothlypis ruficapilla

Also Known As

Chipe Cabeza Gris (Spanish)

The Nashville Warbler is a lively songbird with elegant, understated plumage and a special fondness for sunny forests, brushy undergrowth, and juicy caterpillars. It is also one of several birds in the Western Hemisphere with a rather misleading name. This bird is only in the southeastern United States for a few weeks during migration on its way between the northern forests where it breeds and its wintering grounds in Mexico, Central America, and the California coast. The species was first documented in Tennessee, and the “Nashville” name stuck, although it only stops over in the area during migration.

The Latin name is also rather misleading to anyone watching this bird in the field — the species epithet ruficapilla refers to a small patch of reddish feathers on the bird’s crown, usually invisible among the gray feathers of the rest of the head. Like the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Orange-crowned Warbler, and Yellow-rumped Warbler (scientific species name coronata, for the rarely seen yellow crown), this name may be mystifying to beginning birders, but it might also provide an avenue into the secret social life of the bird.

The ability to hide and reveal this bright, contrasting color patch allows these birds to produce a striking visual signal, which they use to communicate agitation and excitement, particularly in aggressive interactions between males at close range. The closely related Lucy’s and Virginia’s Warblers also have hidden reddish crowns, apparently used in similar contexts. In fact, colorful hidden crown patches have also evolved in distantly related species, like the Western Kingbird, suggesting they may play important roles in these birds’ lives. However, birds are rarely seen actually raising their crowns, and our understanding of their social use is only rudimentary.

Nashville Warblers are quite social. Once the young of the year are independent from their parents, these warblers begin to form large foraging flocks, numbering up to 100 birds. On their nonbreeding grounds, these birds are often at the center of equally large flocks with dozens of species, their persistent contact calls allowing other birds — and birders — to locate them in the forest canopy. In fact, Nashville Warblers may be a “nuclear species,” facilitating the formation of these large and diverse flocks with help from another energetic northern migrant, the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Typically, nuclear species are resident birds, not migrants. But when this warbler-gnatcatcher pair comes to town, they bring the party. (snip-MORE)

(Well, it Is Scottie’s Playtime, after all … )

Fun & Music!

Gotta give the heart and mind a break!

Some Tuesday Fun

https://www.gocomics.com/lards-world-peace-tips

All these creators are indeed blessed!

(I did not verify this one; I simply enjoyed the jam.)

It’s That Saturday Bird Post-

Red-naped Sapsucker

Sphyrapicus nuchalis

Néʼézhiin (Diné / Navajo)

Also Known As

Chupasavia Nuquirroja (Spanish)
Carpintero Nuca Roja (Spanish)

About

The Red-naped Sapsucker is one of four species in the genus Sphyrapicus, the sapsuckers, which are a distinctive group of North American woodpeckers with a peculiar and unique foraging strategy. The sapsuckers are accurately named in that they do, in fact, drink sap, but not by sucking. Rather, these industrious birds create rows of small openings in the bark of specific trees to allow the sweet, nutritious sap to flow, much like a syrup maker tapping a maple tree. They then drink the sap directly from these wells, lapping it up with their specialized feathery tongues. Sapsuckers maintain these openings or “wells” throughout the breeding season, regularly expanding existing holes and opening new ones to take advantage of changes in sugar flow through the season. Their sign on trees is conspicuous: Neat grids of shallow holes that create rings around the trunks of thin-barked trees such as aspen, willow, alder, birch, lodgepole pine, and young Douglas-fir.

In creating these wells, Red-naped Sapsuckers also open an irresistible opportunity for other animals with a taste for sweets. Many birds, especially warblers and hummingbirds, are drawn to sapsucker wells. Researchers have also reported a range of mammals visiting wells, including chipmunks, squirrels, mice, deer, and even bears. Insects feed at these wells too, especially butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, and ants. In turn, the insect activity can attract additional birds that prey on insects, such as flycatchers. (snip-MORE)

Your Weekly Birds: The Songs, The Cuteness … And A Bonus!

Mourning Warbler

Geothlypis philadelphia

Also Known As

Reinita Enlutada (Spanish)
Chipe Llorón (Spanish)

About

Though relatively common over much of its range, the Mourning Warbler is secretive and notoriously hard to observe. These birds mostly stay close to the ground in dense thickets and brush where they forage and nest. Outside of the breeding season, Mourning Warblers are also fairly quiet and can easily go unnoticed. As a result, very little is known of this bird’s life history outside of the breeding season. In fact, there are sizable gaps in our understanding of its breeding biology as well — for instance, no researchers have documented the courtship behavior of this species.

However, one thing we do know is that these birds are fairly particular about their habitat requirements. Mourning Warblers are reliant on thick, brushy second-growth forest, the result of big ecological disturbances, such as fire or major storms, that kill numerous trees and open up gaps in the canopy. Following such a disturbance, habitat becomes acceptable after about two or three years. After another seven or eight years, the forest will have grown back enough that Mourning Warblers will no longer use it. This means that breeding areas for this species are constantly shifting, as one forest regrows and a new opening is (hopefully) created elsewhere. Sometimes referred to as a “fugitive species,” Mourning Warbler populations are frequently “on the run,” fleeing the regenerating forest and searching for another suitable opening.

Fortunately, these birds are not terribly picky about exactly what kind of disturbance creates this ideal habitat. Drought, disease, insect outbreaks, and especially fire are natural disturbances that this species probably relied on historically. In the current day, large forest fires are far less common, but for the Mourning Warblers, human activities seem to work just as well. These birds are commonly found in old clearcuts, abandoned agricultural areas, along logging roads, and even mining and oil well sites. While these heavily disturbed areas do not benefit most species, the Mourning Warbler makes it work. (snip-see MORE here)

Art & A Mental Health Moment Or 2 With Jenny Lawson

There is still whimsy and warmness in the world and you deserve it.

Jenny Lawson (thebloggess)

Hello, friend!

I am two days late on sending this because I was stuck in a depression and it ate all of my extra energy. I started and stopped several drawings because I’m not sure if I didn’t like them or if I just didn’t like me very much. My dr recommended sun and exercise and other things that sound very easy when you are not depressed and it reminded me of a poem my mom read to me so often I’d almost memorized it. (All of A.A. Milne’s poems are the songs of my childhood.) If you hate poetry, skip this part.

The poem always made me feel both cozy and sad at the same time, which was a confusing thing for a small child but also a combination that my brain would grow to specialize in.

It reminded me that recently I’d read that tiny harvest mice have been found asleep in flower beds and so I decided to draw that:

“Sometimes harvest mice will crawl into flowers to feast on the pollen and stamens and will fall asleep inside.”

The drawing is simple and plain and fairly unimpressive, but it made me feel warm inside my heart and that is a very special sort of magic.

This is all a very long way of saying that whimsy and comfort and coziness and nostalgia and joy are all worth more than we give them credit for…whether in drawing mice or reading poems from childhood or eating nectar and drunkenly falling asleep inside flowers.

Go find comfort, my friend.

I promise that you deserve it.

Hugs,