Birdtober Day 20: Golden Plover

The American Golden-Plover travels about 25,000 miles during migration. 

 

 

Black and white with flecks of gold,

Plumage beautiful and bold 

Journeys through places hot and cold

Leaves the travel tales untold

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

 

 

Birdtober Day 19: Red-footed Booby

According to eBird this species is "not seen from the mainland." The birds breed on tropical islands and then spend the rest of their time at sea. It's easy to see why they named them after their feet - they are spectacular - but that bill is also quite something! I decided to write about booby species in general rather than the Red-footed specifically.

 

 

Red-foot, Blue-foot,

Lots of boobies.

Ocean birds

Friendly to newbies.

Peruvian, Nazca,

Masked and Brown

Fly over water,

Love to clown. 

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

Here's my post about the Blue-footed Booby. 

Birdtober Day 18: Crowned Parrot

 

 

A Crowned Parrot isn't a single species; when I searched on eBird I found several different crowned parrots and crowned Amazons. I picked the White-crowned Parrot to write about because it's just so beautiful and brightly-colored. You can see lots of the colors in the video, but also check out the photos here on eBird. This bird lives in Central America; the video was taken in Guatemala. The scientific name is Pionus senilis. The second part refers to the white head, connected with old age and senility.

 

 

Dark brown, brownish-pink, yellowish

Crown of white

Green, dark blue, purplish-blue, light blue

Crown of white

Reddish-brown, green, yellowish-brown

Crown of white

Violet blue, green, reddish-brown 

Crown of white

Brighter green, red

Crown of white

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Poetry Friday: Birdtober Day 17: Great Grey Owl

 

Here are this week's posts:

Saturday: Arctic Tern 

Sunday: Gyrfalcon 

Monday: Gray/Grey Heron 

Tuesday: Costa's Hummingbird 

Wednesday: Ringed Kingfisher 

Thursday: Pygmy Nuthatch 

 

 

 

Sees prey through yellow eyes

Then,

Silent as smoke,

Attacks

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

 

Sarah Grace has today's Poetry Friday roundup. 

Birdtober Day 16: Pygmy Nuthatch

I have three nuthatch species on my life list: White-breasted, Brown-headed, and Red-breasted. Not the Pygmy, though. It's found in the western half of North America, usually in coniferous forests. According to All About Birds, "Pygmy Nuthatches cache seeds year-round by hammering them into crevices or under flakes of bark on the tree, saving them for later.  . . . Sometimes more than 150 individuals sleep in a single tree, stacked up in squares, triangles, diamonds, oblongs, or tiers of birds."

 

Life among pine cones

Storing seeds to eat later 

Sleeping in a pile

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

Birdtober Day 15: Ringed Kingfisher

 

I love this video because it is such a specific sighting, not a collection of various photos from who knows where. We can see the effects of the wind on this bird as it sits on a branch. We can hear the wind. And at the end the videographer pulls back to show us the larger context.

 

I have seen this bird; it's on eight of my checklists, all from Paraguay. When I think of this bird, I recall standing on a particular bridge with my brother as he identified it for me. I can feel the heft of my binoculars around my neck and the heat of the Asunción evening. There are no generic birds and no generic sightings. 

 

 

 

Megaceryle torquata 

with your rattling sound

and your burrow home,

how glad I am to see you

on this one unrepeatable evening

in my life that is short

and yours that is even shorter.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Reading Update

Book #82 of 2025 was Maine Characters, by Hannah Orenstein. Summary: nobody in this book had a life that turned out the way they wanted, but in the end they worked it out. 

 

Book #83 was a book club pick, The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, by Kristin Harmel. This one was the third Harmel title we've read together. Colette Marceau is a jewel thief, which gave a new wrinkle to the Holocaust themes Harmel has explored before. 

 

Book #84 was my first Tana French book, the fifth book in a series. I chose The Secret Place because it was available from the library app without waiting, and as soon as I had read it, I checked out the first in the series, In the Woods, which became book #86 of the year.

 

Book #85 was The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore. I loved some parts of this book, but I thought it was a bit uneven. I found some revelations to be quite unbelievable. 

 

Book #87 was Married to Bhutan: How One Woman Got Lost, Said 'I Do,' and Found Bliss, by Linda Leaming. This was a fascinating memoir about an American woman's experiences in Bhutan. Here's her website.

Birdtober Day 14: Costa's Hummingbird

 

I've written quite a bit about hummingbirds in the past; here's one post from Birdtober in 2022. I've never seen this one and I sure would love to. Look at that bright purple iridescent throat! This species lives in the desert in the western United States. I looked into who Costa was, and it turns out that this hummingbird was named after a French nobleman by an ornithologist friend of his. Kind of a nice gift, I guess. With the eponymous bird names due to be changed soon, I spent some time wondering about what kind of name could be chosen for Costa's. Amethyst is already taken -- there are several hummingbirds with that purple gem as part of their names. I thought of royalty being related to purple, but there's already at least one hummingbird species with royal in its name, in addition to an empress. I didn't find any kings or queens, so those are some possibilities. Several descriptions compare the Costa's purple throat to a mustache, so how about the Violet Mustache as its new name?  And Louis Marie Pantaléon Costa, Marquis de Beauregard himself, the source of the Costa name, had a pretty impressive mustache.  Some sources that have been suggested for the new names are the bird's behavior (and there's a lot of overlap in behavior among different species)  and the indigenous names. The bird's habitat could also be a source, and this one is described in a couple of places as the only true desert hummingbird. So how about Desert Gem? The name Costa won't be lost, no matter what new name is chosen, because it's part of the bird's scientific name, Calypte costae. (Take a look at this list of hummingbird names to give you an idea of how much variety there is, and here's an article about some of the issues involved in bird names.) 

 

 

 

What shall we name you, little bird?
Do you prefer being named after a French nobleman,
a precious stone,
your physical appearance
(stunning, if I may say so)?
Would you like us to describe your behavior
or your surroundings?

I’m guessing, little bird,
that you don’t care at all what we call you.
You’re too busy living your best hummingbird life.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

Birdtober Day 13: Gray/Grey Heron

 

 

I've written a lot about herons in the past; here's one post and it contains a link to others. Herons are so beautiful to watch, and the Gray Heron (Grey is the British spelling) is one of the most common ones we get here in Uganda. The scientific name of this heron is Ardea cinerea, meaning ash-colo(u)red heron.

 

My husband and I went camping by Lake Victoria on Saturday night and I took this picture on Sunday morning. You can see the mixture of mist with the smoke from our campfire. As I thought about the ash and the Gray/Grey Heron, this poem came to be:

 

 

Smoke rises
from the campfire,
Mist rises
from the lake,
Grey Heron rises,
the S of her neck 
writing serenity
across Sunday morning

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey