fine art bird prints

I am hoping that the quizzical look on this bird’s face will be reflected in yours.  No, not my face;  the face of the bird in the first photo.  It was looking, it turns out, at a swarm of DC cormorants, about twenty strong, gliding around on set wings, pretty much in unison, at considerable altitude.  The wings were outstretched straight enough to bring anhingas to mind.  Anyway, I had the luxury of seeing the pictured bird fly before I got the binocs on it, so I already had an ID before I looked more closely.  It would have been harder if I had only seen it on the ground or, especially, out of habitat context.  The bird and I and Stella were enjoying the post nor’easter brilliance of Eel Pond in Edgartown yesterday.

This is not a bird I have seen on the Vineyard.  Maybe others are more familiar with it.  The species, yes, but the plumage, no.  I do know it’s kind of tacky to not include the ident, but this time that’s how it is.  Let’s see what people come up with; and I hope there is some head scratching and page flipping going on. [click to continue...]

Least Sandpipers really are the littlest shorebirds, the least of the shorebird family.  This one is a juvenile, this year’s fledgling, born on the high Arctic tundra, left by its parents to fend for itself amidst the bloom of summer’s thick insect hatch.  Then it self-starts a migratory journey to winter in the southern states or beyond, as far as mid-way down the South American continent.  They are six inches long.

When the adults pass through earlier than this, they are typically worn, drab and colored a smudgy brown.   Some say they look like they have been dipped in tea, a denser brown than other peeps.  The youngsters, like the one pictured below, have crisp fresh plumage, all the feathers sharp, well defined and the colors distinct and rich, the whites bright white.

Bad weather is good for birding and birders feel like adventurers taking on the elements.  This Leastie was one of three working the muddied and puddled dirt road running across the Farm Institute at Katama, just as the strong easterly blow was subsiding.

Birds need to tend to their feathers, in detail.  In the process, this one appears to be in a state of preening ecstasy.

 Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and Lanny McDowell Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

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If you want to delve  into the arcane business of confidently recognizing a Long-billed Dowitcher in the midst of short-billeds this time of year, and it’s still early, please go right ahead and let me know when you have a long-billed nailed down.  All the shorebird books take on this subject and, sort of like the fairly recent Gulls book, the more you read, the more confused and uncertain you are likely to become.  Less can be more.  Dump some of the plumage factors and go for structural comparison.  If you are lucky, really lucky, you will have one species beside the other and not a single bird, bill tucked and snoozing.

The reason for bringing this ID quandary (morass) to the fore is that I saw and photographed a dowitcher on July 29th out at the flats inside the opening of Tisbury Great Pond.  Its central tail feathers were rufous toward the tips, where the barring “should” have a white or light buffy color.  Most references do not mention this feature, but Paulson’s Shorebirds of North America does write about the rufous in the tail being an identifier for long-billed.

Well, in this case I do not happen to believe this, because in another shot taken of the same bird, the bill droops a bit in the last third of its length, which feature is mentioned as reliable for picking out a short-billed (versus a straighter bill for long-billed).  Since every set of comparisons for these two species seems to end up in the scrapheap of variability – except for voice, which all the writers embrace as distinctive – the tail feather ground color issue will be at home on the list of “may be a factor, but not reliable taken alone as a single distinguishing mark”.  In my book, anyway.

We all seem to want the elements that will offer us certainty, but like so many other BIG questions, sometimes the more you look, the less you know.  Not really fair, is it?

Check out the tail feather tips and the bill on this West Tisbury dow:

Dows are Cool! Lan