Cormorants

Cormorants (family Phalacrocoracidae) are the huge, social, fish eating birds, found in both fresh and salty water locations around the United States.

If you've seen one, you have most probable seen hundreds or thousands in a colony throughout breeding season.

All six cormorant species originate in the United States (Double-crested Cormorant; Great Cormorant; Neotropic Cormorant, Brandt's Cormorant, Pelagic Cormorant, and Red-faced Cormorant) split similar bodily features from the head down. They have dark feathers, slender bodies, webbed feet and a medium-sized set of rigid tail feathers.

Eye color is one more distinguishing field identification mark for cormorants. Often if you photograph cormorants in good light conditions, eye color is highlighted.

Cormorants are known as the water birds with no waterproof feathers. They extend their wings in the sun to dry.

Double-creasted Cormorants are the most extensive species in the United States. Their population levels have augmented over the past thirty years, to the point of argument. Some interest groups such as aquaculture farmers and sports fisherman think them as their fishing competitors.

Bushtits

Bushtits are the merely North American members of the long-tailed tit family, Aegithalidae.

They are very tiny, social birds that live and provide for in flocks in many West Coast habitats. Their diet consists of insects, spiders and seeds.

Their bodies are a combination of gray and brown color. Naturally their tail measures about half the size of their body.

Male adult bushtits contain black eyes and female adult bushtits contain a white ring around the iris. Since fledglings take time to expand eye characteristics, the gender of the bird in the picture is hard to determine.

Nests are usually woven from twigs, grass, spider webs and lined with feathers and other native materials, and they are hung from branch’s above the ground.

American Dipper

The American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus), the lone member of the family Cinclidae establish in the United States, as well holds the title as the only aquatic songbird in the country. Dippers are found all through the West, where you find fast moving, cold streams and rivers.

They feel evenly at home in elevated elevation Rocky Mountains Rivers and low height coastal streams, as extensive as the water is clean. Their diet consists first and foremost of aquatic insects, though they will also eat small fish and salmon eggs when they are obtainable.

The picture of the dipper on the left, for example, was in use at a salmon spawning watercourse close to the coast. Like a lot of the diving ducks, dippers jump into the water and forage for their meals. In shallow streams they be inclined to wade along the stream bed pecking for food alike to shorebirds.

American Dippers are average sized birds with dull color feathers. When you watch them for any period of time, you also perceive sound them singing. Both sexes sing freely, for a diversity of reasons, counting marking territory and attracting mates.

Most dippers exist in year round in their favored streams. What little relocation they might practice typically consists of moving up or down stream, depending on climate and food conditions.