Valentine's Day coming up

At this time of year, our birds are decked out in their brightest, showiest colours, getting ready for the spring parties. These were hanging out at the Campbell River estuary.

Mallards resplendent in green, purple, turquoise and chestnut, busily grooming. Gotta look good!

Quieter tones; female wigeons. The male shows off with a bright green stripe down the side of his face.

Mallards pair off in the fall.

A couple of female mallards, hiding their blue/turquoise speculums.

Goldeneye in the distance. I like the stripy water.

Red-breasted merganser, with her spiked hairdo. Her mate will have a dark green head and red eyes. Both their bills are orangey red; here, the colour is too dark to be seen against the light.

Up in the parking lot, the pigeons were hanging out, the males strutting, puffing out their chests: "Look at me! Me! I'm coo-coo-cool!"

Iridescent purple and green scarf, grey wings.

No two pigeons are alike. This one has an interesting wing pattern.

Suddenly, the whole flock takes off at once with a rustle and clap of wings, flies around and around swiftly, then peacefully settles a few metres away from the starting point.

Turkey vulture!

On guard.

"It's our supper. You're not invited!"

More photos, and the story, tomorrow.

Bouncy peeps

On these chilly winter days, how do sandpipers deal with the cold?

We were shivering, in our jackets and scarves, double gloves, warm boots, and the hoods over our tuques.

The sanderling* has no warm socks.

Following the flocks of sandpipers along the shore, I noticed something different about the way they moved. Watch:


*An adult sanderling weighs between 1.4 and 3.5 ounces. The legs are about as thick as a pencil lead. Not much bulk for holding the heat!

Bone specialist needed

On Stories Beach, in Campbell River, I picked up this bird skull. I have never seen one like it before.

Top view. Part of the beak is missing. Length of this bit, 8 cm, height about 3.5 cm., as found.

Luckily, the light was great, and the skull felt fragile, so I photographed it as soon as we got back to the car, on the engine hood.

Bird skulls are usually smooth. This one seems almost feathered, but all that structure is bone. I've been searching for a match; I found a great site, skullsite dot com, with over 1000 bird skulls to compare, and looked at all the bigger ones. There's nothing like this.

Long, hollow bones.

Front view.

Side view, upside down.

The underparts of the bones reflected the light too brightly. Unfortunately, this is the best shot I've got; I packed the skull carefully to bring it home, got it here in one piece, then dropped it and broke the bottom section off.

Bottom view, broken remains.

Side view.

Any guesses? Or outright IDs?

Update: in the comments, five people so far are telling me it's a fish. I'm off to look up fish heads.