Hello! Most of my posts take place around San Diego County, (Mostly Lake Murray) unless otherwise noted.
For more posts and photos, I also post on Hubpages, a site that is a bit different than others. Thanks!: Shorebirdie on Hubpages

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Some interesting juveniles

Two young ballfield killdeer, the one on the left looks a lot like Tiny


Today, none of George's family were in the bay, though I did hear Martha's raspy call when a boat got too close to the shore past the fenced off area. So, I'm sure they were there. As I walked around, I could tell that there was no killdeer food at all in their usual feeding area, no fish, flies or ants. All the insect eating birds were also gone. There was some small flies on the north side of the parking lot and a little sandpiper was eating them, but not a whole lot.

In the ballfields, very few killdeer were seen. At one ballfield, I saw a killdeer that looked a lot like Tiny from the side. I went onto the field and this killdeer, along with his companion, were not very afraid and did no alarm calls. I took lots of photos and when I looked at them closely, I could tell they were not Tiny or any of the Alvarado Bay killdeer. The other killdeer could have been another male, or a female, it was hard to tell. It seemed very attached to the one that looked like Tiny and the one that looked like Tiny did not make any threatening calls or trills when it came close.

Nope, not Tiny, but looks very similar

A friendly companion that liked the Tiny look-a-like

A third killdeer, a male, dropped down into the ballfield and called the other two towards him. That confirmed that it was not Tiny in that field as Tiny has been getting more and more aggressive as he gets older and will not tolerate any other male to get close to him even though his brother begs for his attention.

This third killdeer had an odd shaped head and coloration. I don't know if it's just odd-growing feathers or something really is wrong with his head.

The one on the left has something wrong with its head. The one on the right has almost the exact same profile as Tiny


All three appear to be juveniles, but I don't know where they were raised or whose chicks they are. They were at least 6 weeks old, so I know they're not Junior's chicks as they aren't quite at flying age yet. I don't think they're the M6 chicks as two of the three of those were females and I double checked their baby photos to make sure.

Also seen:

A blue heron, possibly the juvenile one who has just molted into his adult plumage. He managed to get something to eat in Alvarado Bay that was black, but I don't know what. Also, I noticed that he got the fishing line off his leg (or it could be a different heron).

No comments:

Post a Comment