Welcome to the second day of 2014. Only a couple of days into the new year and I’ve already found a great way to force myself to concentrate on the new running mechanics. Simply go out and run on ICE. Nothing forces you to keep your foot plant underneath your body like knowing too much heal strike or less likely too much lean will put you on your ass. Yesterday got to practice my windmilling a couple of times, but zero outright falls so mechanics starting to make its way into muscle memory. Figured I’d bring out a new bird to the blog as the second installment of Project Chekov. This isn’t a rare bird so to speak and in fact it has shown up at our feeders from time to time during the summer months, but all the other birds in the queue kept trumping it. Time to correct that – introducing the Brown-Headed Cowbird.
This birds falls into the category of “Named by an Unoriginal Person”. I can image how that first encounter went “Hey, look at that bird over there – the one with the brown head the color of a cow. Never seen one of dem der winged thingies looken like dat before. I shall call it Brown-Headed Cowbird and it shall be mine” Honestly, is this the best the founder could have done? Oh well, it is what it is and probably should be grateful it is this easy to identify – at least the males.
I tried to pull the shadows out of the RAWs on the two above, but just not enough there to distinguish the deep brown from the surrounding eye shadows.
Hit the jump to see a few more shots of the male and likely the female
Wildlife Intrigued 