Saturday 7/01/2023 2:30 PM
Outback Road, Fairfax, VT
Hazy, 86 °F
It was particularly hot and gross outside today. I did not spend as much time as I typically would have outside because of the lovely heat and air quality combo. My goals were to look for some mushrooms and see if I could get a bird photo (I managed one of these). The birds were, as usual, not pleased when I approached the birdhouses. Today for the first time I heard little cheeps! Congratulations and I apologize to the new mama House Wren I have been agitating for the past few weeks. I stood and ‘pished’ for a while, trying to get a bird to sit still long enough for a photo, to no avail. The water was still high and muddy in the brook, but no minnows or frogs to be seen today, just a handful of water striders. The large mushrooms I found last week were gone. I assume something ate them.
Natural History Mystery:
A mystery I have been wondering about is why so many woodpeckers have a bit of red on them. I’ve noticed this after learning about a bunch of different species in my Ornithology class, and I heard a woodpecker today in the woods which reminded me of it. The red is typically different shapes and in slightly different areas, but it’s a common theme for the woodpeckers to sport black, white, and red.
After doing a bit of research, there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer to this. Scientists have determined that mimicry is the cause for this plumage evolution in different species (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09721-w) but there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why it’s red. Perhaps it’s just because that’s what the first woodpecker in the line had and there was no reason to evolve away from that. There is also evidence that male woodpeckers with brighter heads have a higher fitness (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.221096).
We see this happen in other types of birds as well, like how a large majority of warblers are yellow and gray. Maybe in the future we’ll learn more about this!
Five Photos:
The things I photographed made my site seem more alive, especially the small parts. In generally, my photos highlighted things that are typically not easily noticed and made them seem larger than life. I think this is similar to sketching in the way where you take time and appreciate the small details of your subject. Conversely, with sketching, you can take your time and depict it exactly how you want it, where with photography, you are at the whim of whatever you’re trying to capture. If a bird flies away, you can still draw it, but you can’t take a picture of an empty branch and call it a bird.
I had a good time taking these photos. I spent more time looking at things I typically would just walk by, and then approaching them from different angles until I found one I really liked. For all these photos, I took a bunch of different versions and these were my favorites.