Birds and Bugs

[rain_gryphon]

A quartet of sparrows at the cake feeder earlier today. The two hens are about to go at it over who perches on top. For whatever reason, it is extremely important to be the bird that perches on the top. When the dirty looks turned into open squabbling, the two cocks fled, leaving the hens to fight it out. During the autumn, winter, and early spring, the hens are the more dominant sex. As soon as the issue was decided, everyone calmed down and got along again. Just then I either moved too fast, or made a noise, and they all fled into the bushes, as sparrows do. All except for the one who'd just won the fight. She sat defiantly in place, eating. Either she didn't want to abandon her prize, or else she was a big enough badass that she just wasn't scared of some human.


*****



Three pretty bronze and green beetles going "Om nom nom...".

Comments

[shirebound]

Great observations. The sparrows in our yard have a favorite bush, too.

[rain_gryphon]

Oh, yeah. They're by and large safe in a bush.

[redsixwing]

Great photos and description! I wonder if your hen on top here is a dominant bird overall, or if she just got lucky today.

I have a platform feeder, so there's no real 'top' position for them to squabble over. It's fascinating how birds respond to different equipment.

[rain_gryphon]

I wonder if your hen on top here is a dominant bird overall, or if she just got lucky today.

She's just a dominant individual, I think, even though she's just a little bit smaller than the others. If you look at her thigh in the second picture, when her leg is extended, you can see she's got a healed scar, and some feathers are missing. Sparrow fights are usually stylized affairs, with threat displays followed by bumping into one another like tiny sumo wrestlers, so I doubt that another sparrow did that to her. Still, she's survived a serious battle with someone, which points toward an aggressive bird.

Now look at the other bird. The base of her beak is bright yellow, which marks her as a young adult. She's maybe two months old or so, old enough that in most respects she's an adult, but still very much learning about the world and her place in it. She's unlikely to dominate any of the older hens at her age, plus that bright yellow beak flange deters aggression from the other sparrows.

[redsixwing]

I love the amount of detail in this response, thank you.

Tiny sumo wrestlers!

I noticed the missing feathers, but not the scar. She's a little scrapper.

*squints* Hm, I think Lower Bird's tail is a bit shorter, too. This is especially visible in the second picture when she has it raised up.

...I used to work at a place that had a friendly sparrow population. One of them was nicknamed Shortstop. She'd fledged early and with an almost total lack of tail, and she would hop up to each person on a bench individually, retreating to a grassy area to eat anything she was given. Beg from this one, beg from that one... She was a charming little bird, and the next year, she taught her own batch of baby sparrows to come ask for crumbs.

[rain_gryphon]

She does seem to have a shorter tail, yeah. I hadn't noticed. The fledglings are so cute when they're just little ball-bodied birds with wide baby beaks and no tails! I'm envious that you made friends with Shortstop, and she brought her babies to beg food from you.

Lower Bird is probably one of this summer's babies from my colony boxes, perhaps one of the birds I looked in on while they were still little pink blind things. Now it's that time of the year when there's food everywhere, and no nestlings to tend, so the feeders don't see that much use - a suet cake that would last one day in early spring lasts a week or longer now. That day it was raining, though, and I think the guys using the feeder were probably all birds who live in and around the yard.

[redsixwing]

They really are cute at that stage. (I think they're cute at every stage, even when they are clearly Very Fierce Independent Adults.)

Colony boxes! Oh, cool. *looks up*

[nanila]

Squabbly sparrows!

Are those Japanese scarab beetles?

[rain_gryphon]

I haven't a clue what they are. They're in northern Indiana, maybe one half to three quarters of an inch long, and they're found in large numbers right out in the open, so I'm assuming nothing much here will eat the adults. Very pretty things, just as you see.

[rain_gryphon]

That seems to be them, yes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_beetle