Another day another bird… This is the cute little Pine Siskin. I was not familiar with this bird, so I had to look it up to identify it. I think that is the male up higher and the female is below him with less yellow in her plumage. A cool fact about these guys is the male feeds and provides for the female during incubation, how sweet.Lots of Junco around here!
As most people that live anywhere near the mountains know, this is the vibrant Stellar’s Jay. Look closely and you’ll see the white markings on forehead and eyebrow stripe. This means it is not a juvenile as juvenile Stellar’s lack these white facial markings. Also, the male and female in this species are the same in appearance. In general, other male birds are more colorful than their counterparts mainly for purpose of attracting their mates (sexually dimorphic, meaning “two forms”).
This is the Mountain Chickadee. It is said to be one of the top ten abundant birds in Colorado as it thrives in the state’s conifer forest preferring old growth spruce, fir and Lodgepole Pine forest.
This is a Downy or a Hairy Woodpecker, almost identical birds but difference in size, so hard to tell unless they are side by side. Actually seeing it feed with the Junco, I would guess it’s the Hairy. The Hairy Woodpecker is said to be 9″, and this one looks quite a bit bigger than the Junco which is around 5.5″ in size. The Downy Woodpecker is only an inch bigger than the Junco.
I tried to cut down on the sunset pictures…I am not sorry!
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