Amelia Earhart Park Dec 6 (part 6 of 6) Assorted Birds

[feng_shui_house]

Rooster, blue-gray gnatcatcher, Coot, Florida Gallinule, and a Night Heron trying to eat a reALLy Big Fish.



Rooster


Blue-gray gnatcatcher. These guys are tiny, fast and like to get among twigs so the camera's autofocus doesn't work. YAY, I got a halfway decent shot & then photoshopped it a bit for drama.


Coot


Florida gallinule- I believe this species is extremely similar to the Moorhen- mainly distinguished by where you find them, and by the size/shape of the red 'shield'.


Night heron- its eyes were bigger than its belly. After struggling for about five minutes to swallow the fish, the bird gave up and dropped it. No idea whether the fish survived.

Comments

[linda_joyce]

Wonderful pictures, And yes, the UK Moor hen does have a red shield to the Coots white but the difference in size is the most obvious difference between them when you can't see the head . The Moor hen is about the half the size of the Coot.

[feng_shui_house]

Thanks. And I meant the Florida Gallinule is very similar to the Moorhen. Current authorities say it's the same species as the Common Moorhen, but I go with the folks who say it's different- there are photos here that I think show the two are sufficiently different to be different species.

http://10000birds.com/moorhen-mania-the-splitting-and-renaming-of-the-common-moorhen.htm

[linda_joyce]

That will teach me to actually read every word and not just look at the pictures. I can see that our Moor hens are different enough to be different species but the only way to be sure is to cross breed them, not to be encourages, or genetic analysis.

[feng_shui_house]

I just googled a bit more and found a recent (Feb 2012) article that seems interesting to me.

There are 4 ways of defining species- one is the ability to produce fertile offspring, two is anatomic differences, three is mate selection based, and the fourth includes both physical and behavioral components. It looks like the gallinule species division was based on anatomy and behavioral and genetics. I'm disappointed that they want to call it the common gallinule because they're really not common. I'll stick with Fla. Gallinule as that adds information.

If a bird could have an identity crisis, the common gallinule is a good candidate to have one. It's taken nearly 200 years for ornithologists to conclude that North America's common gallinule is not the same species as Europe's common moorhen. The recent decision is based on differences in vocalizations, differences in the shape of the bill and shield, and differences in mitochondrial DNA. In 2011, a committee of ornithologists split what was formerly considered one species into two species. We now have common gallinules (Gallinula galeata) in North America and common moorhens (Gallinula choropus) in Europe and Asia. The Latin names translate to little hen with helmet (galeata) and little hen with yellow-green feet (choropus).

Bird names are not written in stone. The North American common gallinule's previous names are American moorhen (1818), Florida gallinule (1886), common gallinule (1957, common moorhen (1983) and back to common gallinule in 2011. Other names include skitty coot, black gallinule, red-billed mud hen, water hen and water chicken. The bird makes chicken-like sounds.

Some North American birders are happy to see "their" moorhens changed back to gallinules. North America has no habitats called moors. Moorhen just seemed inappropriate. Moor is an obsolete British word meaning fen or marsh. The word is now used in Great Britain to describe uncultivated upland areas with low vegetation.

[linda_joyce]

So they have already done a DNA analysis and on the mitochondrial DNA, that doesn't mutate as easily as the nuclear DNA and remains stable for millions of years. So they are different species.

[feng_shui_house]

I feel like the Gallinules deserve a 'you're a species' party.:^)

[vera_j]

Great pictures!!!!
The rooster is a wonderful boy and he knows it.
Ah, am I glad to see a coot again! There used to be in plenty here but for some reason, they are almost all gone...they say a kind of epidemy.
And that gnatcatcher is soooo elegant!

[feng_shui_house]

Thanks! That park is slowly getting more and more pretty birds- I think most of them come by themselves!

[pebblerocker]

I do like coots. There were coots at a lake I visited last week and I think they look lovely, with their tidy rounded bodies and flanged feet.

[feng_shui_house]

Coots have very cool toes. Gallinule's legs look spray painted by graffiti artists.