View allAll Photos Tagged preening
Just one more shot of one of the long-eared owls I saw a few weeks ago at Theler Wetlands (Belfair, WA)
It's amazing how early they learn to care for themselves. Canada Goose gosling preening away at a local park.
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Ruby-throated Hummingbird taking time for housekeeping. They don't spend all of their time chasing each other. Thanks for visiting.
So nice to just watch preening behavior. I liked the feather detail in this pose. Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch, Gilbert, AZ. Sept. 2020
Preening ...
Pic in my Birds Album ...
Pic taken Aug 12, 2022
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100x walks #7
Last Sunday's walk was a good ten mile leg stretch that took me down to Newcastle's Exhibition Park and back. The swans were out and about eating the ludicrous amount of food that had brought by kind-hearted strangers.
This glossy ibis was preening its beautiful breeding feathers in the Rich Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera, Florida.
The bird had been hunting along the shore for a couple of hours. A coot and two moorhens were in the same area when alligators began showing up. Three alligators came in from deeper water and started stalking our ibis. They were creeping closer and closer. One alligator crept up on the bank beside the ibis towards us. We were worried about the ibis but did question if the click of the camera or we were attracting them. Finally, the ibis said heck with this, took a hunting break, and flew to the top of a short nearby tree for preening.
Green-Winged Macaw called "Huckleberry" (Ara chloropterus) at the San Diego Zoo. Conservation Status: Least Concern
One of a pair of Egyptian Geese in my local park capture during a morning preening session.
I love the array of beautiful colours and patterns in their plummage.
From the San Diego Zoo:
What makes a macaw? Macaws are king-sized members of the parrot family and have typical parrot features. Their large, strong, curved beaks are adapted for crushing nuts and seeds. Their strong, agile toes are used like hands to grasp things. Loud, screeching and squawking voices help make their presence known in dense rainforests. They are also famous for their bright colors, which seem bold and conspicuous to us but actually blend in well with the green leaves, red and yellow fruits, and bluish shadows of the forest homes.
Macaws are adapted for flying through the trees in the forest, with a streamlined body and tail shape and wings that don’t flap deeply. When they come in for a landing, they drop their tail and feet downward and use their wings like brakes to slow down before grasping a perch with their feet. Most macaws nest in holes of trees or in earthen banks and cliff sides.
Macaws are intelligent and curious birds that like to explore and keep busy. They are very aware of their surroundings, which is necessary to keep watch for predators. As social birds, they spend a lot of time interacting with their mates and their family groups. Macaws have been known to use items as tools, and they like to play with interesting objects they find. They examine the objects from different angles, moving them with their feet, testing them with their tongue, and tossing them around. Macaws are also big chewers, something they need to do to keep their beaks in good shape. They can do impressive damage to even very hard wood with their beaks. Most macaws like to take baths, and they play in the water as they splash around.
Screaming is a natural call for macaws. They do it to make contact with one another, to define territory, and even as part of their play. Their calls can be quite earsplitting to humans! Macaws can also imitate sounds, and macaws that live with or near humans often repeat words they hear, practicing to themselves until they get it right.
Isolating a single bird from the throng of it's flock-mates, proved to be more challenging than I expected. I managed it here though.
French Camargue - August 2018.
Photo 6 of the Nashville Series
From the Nashville Zoo
Flamingos spend about 15% to 30% of their time during the day preening. This is a large percentage compared to waterfowl, which preen only about 10% of the time. Flamingos preen with their bills. An oil gland near the base of the tail secretes oil that the flamingo distributes throughout its feathers.
Flamingos are filter feeders, and in that respect resemble whales and oysters more than they do most birds. Many complex rows of horny plates line their beaks, plates that, like those of baleen whales, are used to strain food items from the water. The filter of the Greater Flamingo traps crustaceans, mollusks, and insects an inch or so long. The Lesser Flamingo has such a dense filter that it can sift out single-celled plants less than two hundredths of an inch in diameter.
Flamingos feed with their heads down, and their bills are adapted accordingly. In most birds a smaller lower beak works against a larger upper one. In flamingos this is reversed; the lower bill is much larger and stronger, and the fat tongue runs within the bill's deep central groove. To complete the jaw reversal, unlike other birds (and mammals) the upper jaw is not rigidly fixed to the skull. Consequently, with the bird's head upside down during feeding the upper bill moves up and down, permitting the flamingo's jaws to work "normally."
Part of the flamingo's filter feeding is accomplished simply by swinging the head back and forth and letting the water flow through the bill. The tongue also can be used as a pump to pass water through the bill's strainer more efficiently. It moves quickly fore and aft in its groove, sucking water in through the filter as it pulls backward, and expelling it from the beak as it pushes forward. The tongue may repeat its cycle up to four times a second.
Flamingos are not the only avian filter feeders, however. Some penguins and auks have simple structures to help them strain small organisms from water, and one Southern Hemisphere genus of petrels (Pachyptila, prions or whalebirds) and some ducks have filtering devices. The Northern Shoveler, the most highly developed filter feeder among the ducks, has specialized plates lining its long, broad bill. The Mallard also has a broad bill, horny plates, and an enlarged tongue. But the pumping action of the ducks is different, and their tongues are housed in the upper mandible, rather than in the lower as in the flamingos.
The flamingo's marvelously adapted tongue almost became its downfall. Roman emperors considered it a delicacy and were served flamingo tongues in a dish that also included pheasant brains, parrotfish livers, and lamprey guts. Roman poets decried the slaughter of the magnificent birds for their tongues (much as early American conservationists lamented the slaughter of bison for theirs). One poet, Martial, wrote (as Stephen Jay Gould recently translated):
My red wing gives me my name, but epicures regard my tongue as tasty.
But what if my tongue could sing?
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Nikon D500
AF-S NIKKOR 600mm f/4G ED VR
f/4.0
1/800
ISO 125
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A Killdeer takes some time to preen its feathers on a lovely warm afternoon.
Killdeer are of the Plover family.
Feathers are critical to a bird's survival as they contribute to insulation, waterproofing and aerodynamic flight and for those reasons, birds spend a great deal of time preening. Preening is how a bird keeps their feathers clear of parasites, dirt, displacement of feathers and interlocking lose barbs.
Aulacorhynchus albivitta
(Southern Emerald toucanet / Tucancito Esmeralda)
La Ceja, Colombia; 2.300 meters above sea level.
Like other toucans, the Emerald Toucanet is brightly marked and has a large bill. The adult is 30–35 cm (12–14 in) long. The sexes are alike in appearance, although the female generally is smaller and slightly shorter-billed.
The Emerald Toucanet is a generally common in humid forest and woodland, mainly at higher elevations.
Wikipedia