{"id":131,"date":"2009-02-05T14:30:59","date_gmt":"2009-02-05T20:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=131"},"modified":"2009-08-26T13:05:32","modified_gmt":"2009-08-26T19:05:32","slug":"long-time-no-seea-bird-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=131","title":{"rendered":"Long time, no see&#8230;a bird returns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In December 2002, I was birdwatching at the site of what would be Fox Pavilion (hadn&#8217;t been built yet.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We had a flock of cardinals that showed up every day&#8230;but that day, there was a female bird with them that wasn&#8217;t a cardinal.\u00a0 It was a Pyrrhuloxia, a close relative whose normal range is well west of here.<\/p>\n<p>I had only a little point and shoot camera then, and it was a heavily cloudy day, late in the afternoon, so my pictures of the female Pyrrhuloxia weren&#8217;t very good&#8211;just good enough to show that&#8217;s what it had to be.\u00a0 That female was somewhat melanistic, very dark indeed, noticeably darker than the female cardinals perched in the same scrubby trees.<\/p>\n<p>I watched every winter, but did not see another one until today: on the feeder in the back yard.\u00a0\u00a0 I wasn&#8217;t able to get a picture of it except through the study window&#8211;old glass, and can&#8217;t be opened so it can&#8217;t be cleaned&#8211;so it&#8217;s blurry&#8211;and handheld with my less-great lens, but here it is:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_132\" style=\"width: 322px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-132\" class=\"size-full wp-image-132\" title=\"pyrrhuloxia-f120\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/pyrrhuloxia-f120.jpg\" alt=\"Pyrrhuloxia, female\" width=\"312\" height=\"206\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/pyrrhuloxia-f120.jpg 312w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/pyrrhuloxia-f120-300x198.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 312px) 100vw, 312px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-132\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pyrrhuloxia, female<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Note that the bill is yellow, with the upper part (culmen) sharply curved, and the bird is a cool gray, with minimal red in the crest, around the eye, and in the folded wing.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a female cardinal (but this taken outside, so there&#8217;s no blurring by the old dirty glass in the window and with my best lens) as gray as they look in our yard&#8211;usually they show warmer colors&#8211;and always the red bill and more red in crest, eyes, wings, and tail.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-133\" title=\"cardinal-f146\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/cardinal-f146.jpg\" alt=\"cardinal-f146\" width=\"302\" height=\"275\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/cardinal-f146.jpg 302w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/cardinal-f146-300x273.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 302px) 100vw, 302px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Even though the Pyrrholoxia picture isn&#8217;t as good as I&#8217;d wish, it&#8217;s still nifty to see one back again, this time in sunlight and close enough to see details with the binoculars.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I expect these &#8220;desert cardinals&#8221; (as we called them when I was a kid) to appear in our area more often as climate change makes it hotter and dryer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In December 2002, I was birdwatching at the site of what would be Fox Pavilion (hadn&#8217;t been built yet.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We had a flock of cardinals that showed up every day&#8230;but that day, there was a female bird with them that wasn&#8217;t a cardinal.\u00a0 It was a Pyrrhuloxia, a close relative whose normal range is well [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,4],"tags":[71,8,70],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-wildlife","tag-activities","tag-bird-behavior","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}