Tag: young

A feather for lunch.

This week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge is The Food of Love.

I gave this some thought and then remembered this photo. It shows a fairly common piece of behavior for various species of Grebes that researchers and scientists have yet to fully explain.

The photo shows an adult Great Crested Grebe feeding one of its breast feathers to two of its young. One theory suggests this behavior is an aid to digesting their food by protecting their stomach from sharp fish bones. Another theory is that the feathers help the birds form pellets of undigested fish bones allowing them to regurgitate the pellets.

Adult Great Crested Grebe with young.

Week 29. A bird in the rain.

Sunday of week 29 started off dry until I set the camera up in the yard. Within 10 minutes it was spotting with rain and 15 minutes after that it was raining. It’s still raining as I write this post, I don’t think it’s stopped since it started.

We really needed the rain, it’s been so dry around here this summer the leaves are coming off the trees.

To the photo, it’s a young male Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus) photographed on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak in the rain.