The best way to find a camouflaged peregrine is to look for whitewash (poot) on the cliff or building.
There are two nearly camouflaged peregrines in Jeff Cieslak’s photo below, taken on Cathedral of Learning Banding Day 2022 from Flagstaff Hill. Inside the red circle one is flying to the left (Morela) and another is perched on a stone peak to the right (Ecco). Note the whitewash on Ecco’s perch. It indicates that’s one of his favorite locations.
Morela and Ecco on Banding Day 2022 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
If you’re looking for a peregrine and can’t find any of these clues, check every knob with enough room for a peregrine to stand and take off.
Good luck! Peregrines can be perfectly camouflaged.
Green herons returned to southwestern Pennsylvania last month to hunt our waterways for fish and crustaceans. When life is calm for a green heron — which is most of the time — he keeps his head feathers sleeked.
But when he feels threatened or he wants to threaten someone else, he raises his head feathers, squawks or clucks, and often tail-flips before he rushes his opponent. The further out he stretches his neck, the more upset he is.
Last night was the end of the Grouse Lek Extravaganza in Colorado so today I’m flying home to Pittsburgh with memories of dancing chickens in my head.
By now you may think that North America is the only place where chickens dance, but I saw little bustards (Tetrax tetrax) in Spain last September who molt into breeding plumage in late winter and dance to impress the drab-colored ladies in March.
In spring, male little bustards assemble on the lek, puff their spiffy black and white necks, and perform a stamp, click, leap and tweet dance.
I wonder how he makes that Clicking sound.
Like the greater sage-grouse and greater prairie chicken, the little bustard is listed as Near Threatened because of habitat loss throughout its range. Though it breeds in Southern Europe and in Western and Central Asia …
Europe holds around 40% of the global breeding range, but may hold as much as 80-90% of the global population. … The European population is estimated to be declining by 30-49% in three generations (30.9 years).
Today is the last day of the Grouse Lek Extravaganza tour. In six days we’ve traveled more than 1,200 miles in Colorado to see all five dancing birds and, though we saw this one two days ago, I am saving the best dance for last.
When it comes to performances on the lek, Gunnison and greater sage-grouse are stately, dusky grouse are secretive, and prairie chickens are an audio experience. However, everybody’s favorite dance is the one performed by the sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus). See if you don’t agree.
This morning we are up and out very early to see the greater sage-grouse lek, described here with video. Afterward we travel almost 400 miles: visiting sub-alpine habitat, crossing the Continental Divide at Loveland Pass, descending the Front Range to Wray, Colorado near the place where Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas meet.
Tomorrow we’ll see prairie birds in Wray and at Pawnee National Grassland. I can hardly wait to see these Life Birds:
For greater prairie chickens (Tympanuchus cupido) their booming hum is just as important as the dance moves on the lek. Prairie chicken leks can be found from eastern Colorado and Kansas to North Dakota and western Minnesota. We will visit one near Wray. Sparky Stensaas recorded this one in Minnesota.
All longspurs have a long back toe (hallux) or “long spur” that gives them their name. Though lapland and Smith’s longspurs visited the Great Plains over the winter, they have left for their arctic breeding grounds while two other longspur species have stayed to breed.
Thick-billed longspurs (Rhynchophanes mccownii) like short grass prairie and perform their courtship dance above it in the sky.
In its striking aerial display, the male flutters upward to a height of about 10 m (32 ft) and then descends, teetering on outstretched wings held back to display the vivid white lining, with its white-and-black “T”-patterned tail fanned, and issuing a tinkling, warbling song.
The lark bunting (Calamospiza melanocorys) is the State Bird of Colorado and a plentiful sparrow of the Great Plains.
For most of the year male lark buntings match the landscape but in March and April they begin to molt into striking black and white plumage and slowly migrating north. Males arrive a few days before the females; each male establishes a territory in what appears to be a colony, and begins its aerial displays. — paraphrased from Birds of the World: Lark Bunting
The first grouse we’ll see on the Grouse Lek tour is the Gunnison sage-grouse (Centrocercus minimus) a target species for many birders because it is listed as Endangered by the IUCN and its declining population contains only 1,770 to 8,000 adult birds. Ironically the species did not “exist” until 1995 when it was split from the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus).
From Colorado Parks and Wildlife[1]: “In the late 1990’s Colorado wildlife researchers found that the sage-grouse in the Gunnison Basin were unique from the sage-grouse found elsewhere. Named for its home range the bird is:
Two thirds (2/3) the size of the greater sage-grouse
Has more distinct white barring on its tail feathers, seen from behind during the strut
A yellow-green fleshy comb above each eye … and …
Long filoplumes that arise from the back of the neck and are tossed up and back during the strut.
It also has a completely separate range from the greater sage-grouse.
This map shows the current and the potential ranges both species might resettle if their numbers grew. “As of 2012 the Gunnison sage-grouse inhabited only 10% of its original range”[1].
Unfortunately the Gunnison sage-grouse is in trouble. It’s only found in seven isolated locations in Colorado and has one tiny population in Utah. Its range keeps shrinking.
In 2013 US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing it as Endangered but feedback from residents, ranchers, local governments, and the oil and gas industry did not want the land use constraints so for now it is listed as Threatened in the U.S.
Today our tour will see the birds from afar at a lek on the crest of a hill. We are privileged to see this endangered dance.
Learn more about the Gunnison sage-grouse in this video from High Country News.
Question of the Day: What is a lek and why do grouse do it?
“A lek is an aggregation of male animals gathered to engage in competitive displays and courtship rituals, known as lekking, to entice visiting females which are surveying prospective partners with which to mate.” — Wikipedia definition of Lek Mating
Each species performs its unique song and dance, heavily influenced by female choice. Only the females’ favorite dancers get to mate so those are the traits passed to the next generation.
Let’s take a look at the courtship ritual of the most numerous grouse in the American West, the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). Notice that his “song” is something like “blub… blub blub.” The ladies hear it and come to the lek.
As males and females gather at the lek, the arrangement of individual birds within the arena changes as the strong males challenge and push away the weaker ones. The dominant males end up in the center, weaker ones on the edges (alpha-male is highest ranking, then beta-male, gamma-male, etc).
After the males’ hierarchy is established the females mate with the dominant male(s) in the center. The ladies invite mating by facing away and tenting their wings.
Nine years ago two studies of rock pigeon (Columba livia) brain power discovered that pigeons can tell the difference between a real 4-letter English word and a nonsense collection of four letters.
In the experiment, pigeons were trained to peck four-letter English words as they came up on a screen, or to instead peck a symbol when a four-letter non-word was displayed.…
Eventually the four birds in the experiment recognized 26 to 58 real words and correctly labelled over 8,000 as non-words.
Though they know a real 4-letter word when they see one, they don’t know what it means, so they can’t tell the difference between a good 4-letter word and a bad one.
Gusto flies upside down in courtship with Luna at the Hilliard Bridge, Spring 2025 (photo by Chad+Chris Saladin)
15 April 2025
Ten days ago in Birds Showing Off I blogged about the courtship flights of four raptor species: western marsh harrier, golden eagle, bald eagle and peregrine falcon and included photos of peregrines flying upside down from C&C’s Ohio Peregrine Page on Facebook by Chad+Chris Saladin.
Peregrine in sustained upside down flight Hilliards Bridge, Ohio, Spring 2025 (photos by Chad+Chris Saladin)
The backstory is awesome, too, quoted from Chris’s post:
We were enthralled and entertained by Gusto and Luna engaging in gravity-defying courtship flights around the Hilliard bridge on a very windy day (30-40 mph winds that would blow our hats off without our hoods up tight over them)! It was tough to stabilize and to hold our cameras still enough to capture it.
We’ve mentioned before that seeing peregrines flying in heavy wind and getting to watch them in the showy courtship mode as they are bonding results in some of the most mind-blowing flight angles and body postures imaginable! And peregrines are amazing enough in flight without the aid of the wind, but when you add in the heavy gusts the speed reaches UNREAL proportions!
They were zipping over and around us, through the bridge arches underneath and then reappearing over our heads with swift ring-ups. They were hanging in the wind nearly motionless, and then with a slight twitch or tuck they would speed by, cutting through the wind, or angling their bodies for a tailwind to push them into overdrive!
You can often see the difference between males and females in flight, with males achieving more adept maneuvers and higher speeds overall. In this case the difference was even more striking, as the experience of maturity showed—although Luna was really moving through the air quickly, it was as if Gusto could fly circles around her!
In this album we’re sharing a sequence of Gusto in flight upside down out over the valley—it was somewhat distant, so we tried not to over-crop this sequence, but we still hope this provides enough detail to show his sustained upside down flight with his head contorted as he was focused on his flight path while flapping and gaining even more momentum! INCREDIBLE!!
Female house sparrow dust bathing (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
11 April 2025
Though we may not have seen them doing it, a variety of birds and mammals(*) bathe in dust to remove parasites from their skin, feathers and fur. House sparrows are the most common city critters to engage in this activity but, as Liberta Cherguia @MbarkCherguia describes below, it can be hard to capture them on video.
I waited 3 hours for this
When I was walking across the Norrtälje river I noticed several pits in the sand and thought to myself that they must be made by birds taking sand baths.
I set up my camera pointing at one of the pits and then I simply had to wait. A few sparrows… pic.twitter.com/xTc8ZWApFa
(*) p.s. Did you know that horses like to take dust baths? According to Wikipedia, racing stable yards traditionally include a sand roll area for use by the racehorses after exercise.
