Showing posts with label Victoria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Victoria. Show all posts

Friday, September 2, 2011

Northwestern Crow?

There were a lot of Crows in Victoria, especially in Beacon Hill Park. Questions is, what kind of Crow? Based on range, they should be Northwestern Crows, though they are mostly indistinguishable from American Cows. Supposedly slightly smaller and slightly deeper call, I am not experienced enough to know for sure. Most range maps show the Northwestern Crow's range to start in the upper left hand corner of Washington state and extends north along the coast of Canada well into the southern coast of Alaska, while the American Crow's range is excluded from this area.
So I suppose they are Northwestern Crows, though some dispute that they actually a separate species. There was a rather spirited discussion on this topic a few months ago on OBOL.
The top two images are of a juvenile, while the bottom is an adult.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Cooper's Hawk - Juvenile

My wife and I made two visits to Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, BC. It's really a beautiful park with a diversity of environments, from harbor coast to grasslands to dense forest to floral gardens to a petting zoo and a cricket field, all very well done.
While there were large numbers of birds, the diversity was low, I suspect due largely to the time of day and year. The most interesting bird was a juvenile Cooper's Hawk that I found near the top of low Willow tree we happened to be standing under. It stuck around just long enough to get a couple of shots.
Other than that, there were large numbers of Mallards, Canada Geese, Rock Pigeons and Crows.
To spice things up and challenge the colorful flowers, they added a couple of Peacocks.
I also saw this odd, dark Mallard. I suspect it is a Mallard x domestic duck hybrid, but I did not see any domestic ducks anywhere in the park or the city.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Glaucous-winged Gull - Juvenile

I haven't taken any time to bird yet here in Victoria, BC, but I have taken a few pictures of birds. Based on plumage and beak color and the fact that Glaucous-winged Gulls are by far the predominant Gull here, I assume this is a juvenile Glaucous-winged Gull. It, along with another, were standing on the waters edge along a city walkway.