Author Archives: Ananth Ramaswamy

About Ananth Ramaswamy

Ananth Ramaswamy is a naturalist who loves Paleontology and Ornithology. His first favorite subject is Paleontology. He knows a lot and is quite obsessed. Aditi, his sister, always says that his first movie choice would be something like Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, the movie that shows life after the dinosaurs and the mammal’s Evolution. He would also see Walking With Dinosaurs or Walking With Monsters, The movies which tell life during and before the dinosaurs. For Ornithology, which he talks about more, was one of the two main reasons that he made this blog.

List of birds I have seen in Shoreline

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C = captive

R = Rare

* equals common

White-cheeked Pintail (C) 

Common Eider (R) 

Barrow’s Goldeneye

Common Goldeneye

Bufflehead *

Redhead (R)

Common Pochard (R) 

Canvasback (R) 

Pied-billed Grebe

American White Pelican *

Brown Pelican (R) 

Double-crested Cormorant (R) 

Great Blue Heron *

Snowy Egret (R)

Great Egret (R)

Common Black-Hawk (R) 

American Coot *

Black-necked Stilt *

American Avocet (R) 

Dunlin (R) 

Purple Sandpiper (R)

Red Knot *

Black-tailed Gull (R) 

Ring-billed Gull *

Pomarine Jaegar (R) 

 

Little Blue Heron (Egretta caerulea)

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This bird is very rare to the west coast, in fact, so rare that I have only seen this bird in a small swamp. (It could have been a Tricolored Heron.) I did not get a photo of it. The Little Blue Heron I saw had a downy blue head with pinkish-red neck and body feathers.

The Little Blue Heron will hybridize with Snowy Egret and Cattle Egrets.

Walking With Dinosaurs: A Troodon’s point of view

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Groar…Groar… Something big is coming through the jungle. He looks around with his mean eyes and thinks only of one thing (at the moment): food. He Narrates the following:

He was watching a Pachyrhinosaurus herd. His sharp brain knew where they were going. A small bird landed on his shoulder. “Lets see… hmm… we need some young Pachyrhinosaurus.” So he followed the herd to their nests, and then waits. His eyes light up when he saw: “eggs!” he rushed forward and grabbed an egg. Dinner was ready. The bird on his shoulder (Alexornis) said, “Umm, Troodon, I’m pretty sure that they saw that.” Troodon looked up, alarmed. “Help!” he screamed. Then Troodon and the Alexornis ran, hoping to evade the huge, killer horns. Luckily they grabbed a Quetzelcoatlus and flew away. They now (With Troodon’s thermal vision cellphone), could get a stereo version of the ground. Then they flew back to their house (He lived all alone, excluding his mentor, Alexornis.)

Great Blue Heron (Ardea Herodias)

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My, my, this bird is really amazing! The Great Blue Heron was foraging at the time, a sight that one of the teachers in my school, Mr. Morgan, really wants to see. When you see a Great Blue Heron foraging like that, you must be still. Observe carefully (Trust me, this is what every birder on the planet says, so you must obey it while watching birds!)

Great Blue Herons are normally quite stationary when foraging, probably because they can see more of the world, and prey can quickly be spotted. Any other pose and luck would run out fast (Unless you stuck your head underwater!)
However, luck came to this famished Great Blue Heron, and SPLASH! The Great Blue Heron was rewarded with a small transleucent fish. He opened his beak and..  … That was when we got a photo of him, just as he was swallowing his catch. You can see more in the Gallery.

Thus concluding the Great Blue Heron article, we shall move on to the Gallery. However, check out my friend’s blog, which is animalsinmyworld.com.

Gallery

– Great White Heron (A subspecies)

Western Willet (Tringa semipalmata inornata)

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Willets are the best birds for a good photo. Really. They pose so well one birder might even think that they are actually watching the people taking photos of them. Lucky for us we came across a Willet twice. That to the Willet posed for the camera. We got some awesome shots that would even put me in awe. They would be prime till the arrival of the new Great Blue Heron. A silent, soft bird, this bird is amazing. You can watch it when it poses on one leg sometimes (a neat Sandpiper trick.)

Unfortunately, you must lie down in the mudflats to get a good photo, which are probably covered in guano (actually, birds were sitting on a plant-covered island of Guano!), and scattered with half-eaten shells. (They probably have smelly meat inside.)

This, by far, is the latest post I have, but for now, watch out for the Northern Jacana.

Gallery 

– Eastern Willet

An Example of the Western Willet (Tringa semipalmata inornata).

An Example of the Western Willet (Tringa semipalmata inornata).

American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana)

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The American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana) is a weird waterbird, namely because of its curved bill, something seen mostly in Curlews, another type of Sandpiper. They feed by whipping their long curved bills through the water (Weird, right?) 

American Avocets are easy to find, and you do not have to get down on the mudflats to see them (if you like on your stomach, you probably would get their legs!) They breed with Black-necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus), so do not think that I’ve got it all weird when I start talking about the Avostilt like mad (See Black-necked Stilt for this one.)

My friend, Ari, who is a amateur Ornithologist, has been dying to see the American Avocet. I can not wait till I tell him I have seen one close up.

Gallery 

– American Avocet (Only American Group)

American Avocet feeding.

American Avocet feeding.

 

 

 

 

Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca)

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The Greater Yellowlegs is the largest of the two species of Yellowlegs native to North America, the other one being the Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipens). I saw this bird in the same mudflats where we also saw the Black-necked Stilt. The Greater Yellowlegs was with a Northern Shoveler duck, (see Northern Shoveler.) We saw only one Greater Yellowlegs, and this was pretty sad.

The Greater Yellowlegs has no subspecies, as this bird is Monotypic. Its cousin, the Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipens), is the same. They have long, thin, yellow legs (Hence the name, what else?) and a long black bill. (I suspect their diet contains heavily of worms and other invertebrates in the mudflats, as our Greater Yellowlegs was seen probing next to a duck.

Now that I have told some important facts of Greater Yellowlegs, you can look at our Gallery:

Greater Yellowlegs (Monotypic; I will just shorten it to M., but do not get confused with male!) 

– Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipens) 

Greater Yellowlegs

Black-necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus)

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Pink, long legs and a long beak, the Black-necked Stilt is pretty easy to recognize as they fly around with their pink legs (see gallery). As first we saw only two Black-necked Stilts, wading around in the water. The second disappeared till only his jet black head with streaks of white and a pointed bill was seen when he was only peeking from a long canal.  (This was at Shoreline). 

Then we saw a third Stilt. (This ended up with really good shots, where we got the Stilt not only wading, or in this case, standing, under the water but with a brilliant reflection on the surface of the water. In fact, this picture is so good it is first in the Gallery.)

As I said, we got some brilliant photos of Stilts. Unfortunately, some American Coots got in the way, so some Stilt photos have American Coots preening or some blurry American Coot images. (Still, I think that these are good.) Then we went to the final stop: Where there were not just 1, but at least 15 species of birds.  The Black-necked Stilt, according to The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America (pretty long name, is it not? I just call it Stokes.), is a juvenile from June to January. It is ready to breed from late April to August, with a peak in June (Wikipedia). Speaking of which, the American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana) also breeds from April to August. 

Himantopus, (Black-necked Stilt), can interbreed with Recurvirostra, (American Avocet), but Wikipedia talks of only one hybrid in the San Francisco Zoo which died in 1974. Its dad was an Avocet and mom was a Stilt. Wish I could have seen the Avostilt. We seem to have seen only males, which are a glossy jet black, and washed with a neat white. Females are more of a slaty gray and deep brown bars on wings, (Similar white and pink legs to male.) (Personally, I think that the reason that the male Stilt has a brighter and more showy color is to attract mates. All male birds take part in courtship, except in a kind of sandpiper (plover) shorebird group called the Phalaropes. (There females take part in courtship, which is pretty odd.)

At the tidal mudflats (The best place to look for sandpipers and plovers, along with many other shorebirds), we saw an array of birds. These included the Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa, or Tringa melanoleuca), and the Western Willet (Tringa semipalmata inornata; although this bird was sighted generally toward the estuaries and bay.) There were many species of birds present, including the American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana), but these did not notice us, as they were all too busy foraging for food. (We met a man who told us to lie down on your stomach in the mudflats to get a good picture of the Shoveler ducks and the sandpipers, but the mudflats were mostly more of watery areas and some sandbars, mainly harboring Gulls as well as some odd brown birds. (I suspect that they might have been Pomarine or Parasitic Jaegars (Stercorarius pomarinus; Pomarine Jaegar; and Stercorarius parasiticus; Paradise Jaegar,) As now that we have covered a lot on these amazing birds, so now, are you ready to take a look at our Gallery?

Gallery (Including single (1) subspecies mexicanus, as according to the Stokes field Guide to the Birds of North America.)

– New Zealand Stilt (Himantopus) 

– Pied Stilt (Himantopus) 

Black Necked Stilt

The Last Puffin in Iceland (Sadly)

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I met Sunil Uncle in Chicago and asked him if he had seen a Frigatebird near the Great Lakes. He said “If I see it, I will eat it.” Then he told me how he had eaten the Last Puffin in Iceland. He said “Even if it was the last puffin, I still would eat it. (He told me Puffins taste like Chicken). Too bad that he happened to eat the last Puffin in Iceland. Had he not, I would have been able to take photos of the Puffins with their vibrant beaks stuffing fish into their mouths voraciously. (Good part is, that Puffins still exist throughout the Northern Hemisphere.) Clearly, I think all the Birds of the World should be frightened.

A Reply I posted on October 14 (approximate), 2013:

Now I have not been blogging on the computer lately because I got a violent concussion (and I still have violent headaches). I read about the Puffins on an awesome website from Iceland. I feel jealous that the children of Iceland save the baby Puffins (and then also, remember they eat the parents. I wonder if they eat the eggs to?) Finally now I get to at least blog about something. Also, I really want to be a researcher and go to Surtsey island, or the second-youngest island, which formed in 1963. Now I know that there are about 8 to 10 million Puffins in Iceland. Phew!

Rosy Boa (Lichanura trivirgata)

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The last in the three members of Boidae, Rosy Boas are similar in shape and size to other Californian Boas.

Description: Very similar to Rubber Boas in both shape and description.

Distribution: Same region as the Southern Rubber Boa. This snake lives up till Sonora, Mexico.

Diet: Small animals

Genus: Lichanura

Family: Boidae