I stopped at Afton State Park yesterday to hang with sparrows. And boy did I come on some weird bird activities.
Aaaarrrr, matey! The first weird find was a one eye clay-colored sparrow. On the one side of his face he looked totally normal, but the other side the who eye was gone and the area surrounding it was sunken in. He was pretty aggressive chasing other clay-coloreds out of his territory. I wonder if he lost it as a young bird in the nest (did he hatch that way) or if he lost it during a past territory battle? It's an old, healed-over wound, did he go all the way through migration with one eye? Birds are just incredibly resilient creatures.
I later found an eastern kingbird struggling to eat a sphinx moth--and do I mean struggle! Here's a quick six second video (only wind in the background--no narration):
Did you see that, the moth totally baled on the kingbird, but the kingbird got it back. Here is a link to a sideways video of the kingbird trying to kill the still live moth. And finally here is a video of the kingbird trying to eat the large thing:
Alas, I did not video the final swallow--my batteries were running low and the camera was refusing to video. But I did get a photo right after the swallow:
"Urp. I can't believe I ate the whole thing."
And here it is wiping the remains of the moth off the sides of its bill.
And then the kingbird was on the alert, watching for another tasty fat moth.
I did find a first year male orchard oriole. In another year, he will look totally different.
And here's a bluebird. Nothing unusual, he didn't try to eat a huge moth. He had both his eyes, but he just looks pretty.
Okay, now time to deal with packing and last minute errands.