When I opened my post box this afternoon, I found a pelican looking back at me, a Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) to be both generic as well as specific. Now before you chastise me for having been into the sauce before the sun was fully over the yard-arm as well as for making bad taxonomic […]
John E. Riutta
About John E. Riutta
Posts by John E. Riutta, MA, MBA, FLS:
The View from Lookout Rock
For some time now, I’ve noticed that one particular rock, which I have dubbed Lookout Rock, in our front garden seems to be of great interest to all the birds who visit the property. Any bird I’ve seen anywhere near the front feeders at one time or another seemingly finds it necessary to stand on […]
How Not To Be Seen
For years I have been advocating that people, especially bird watchers, slow down if they truly want to appreciate the subtle wonders of the natural world. Occasionally, this slowing down sometimes requires the achievement of a complete stop. Take the idea of the plumage color and pattern of some common birds. Under day-to-day observation, a […]
A Preponderance of Evening Grosbeaks
This evening, as I do every evening, I pulled the SD card from my Wingscapes BirdCam to see what avian life visited the property today. To my great delight, there was a preponderance (if that is the correct venereal noun) of grosbeaks – Evening Grosbeaks (Coccothraustes vespertinus) to be precise. According to Bill Thompson III […]