Birds and Nature

Finally I got a daytime video clip of this phoebe family. So why is the video so dark? These phoebes like to perch below overhanging vegetation in the shade and this is just such a shady/dark location. And they are on the other side of the Arkansas River which at this point is 80-100 feet away so I have the zoom all the way out to 40X. Even at that there are several times when the orange lining of the fledglings mouth is quite visible. The young are now 10 days old and 2 on now independent leaving this last one (from the last egg laid) to be fed by the attending parent. Though they have again moved from the location adjacent to the nest site, they are only about 150 feet downstream still along the Arkansas River.

This is the last clip of the 3 fledglings together. It's interesting that all 3 engage in tail spreading--wonder if this is like yawning for us, a contagious behavior? Note that after the parent bird visits the fledgling on the bottom left on 3 consecutive times (for sure feeding it on one of those times, the other times not clear) that that fledgling decides to try it's hand at catching it's own food. SeEtta

This is another video clip of the 3 fledglings in the phoebe family near Canon City being fed by the one harried parent. If it looks like the larger appearing fledgling (at first on the right, then when the fledgling to it's upper left flies over it the fledgling is in the center of the three) is being fed more often than the other two, that is what I observed over a period of 5-10 minutes. Is this because it is more adept at opening it's beak wide or begging for food? SeEtta

This and the following video clips can be seen full screen by double-clicking on the video. The picture is reasonable good on my 14 inch laptop but I don't know how good it will be on larger screens. Finally, after refinding this possible hybrid BlackXEastern family, they are in a location where I could get some video of them--unfortunately it was close to dark and the light was poor. However, the video does show hard this phoebe parent works to feed it's hungry, growing fledglings. I say these are possible hybrid phoebes because I saw one adult feeding them the evening that they fledged, that was probably a hybrid (it appeared to likely be an intermediate plumaged phoebe I photographed this spring at this location that had a very brown streak on it's forehead. These birds are now back at the location where I first saw them not long after they fledged and after the parents moved them downstream several hundred yards when some fishermen invaded their space. The fledglin...