Jim Schmoker brought up a very good point when he asked me, in essence, "Does an Ovenbird parent necessarily rule out cowbird." Of course, the answer is "no". In fact Ovenbirds are parasitized by cowbirds at a high rate. Jim's email made me scramble and hopefully calling my young bird an ovenbird is still correct. The power point frame below shows the Rist Canyon bird I saw being fed by an adult Ovenbird and a juvenile of approximately the same age taken by Geoff Dennis from the BNA account of Ovenbird. While I couldn't find a great comparison photo of a cowbird at this age, I think their bill is thicker, blacker and shaped differently, and their feet are blackish as opposed to pink.
I also got a great graphic from Greg Pasquariello that depicts the plumage development of Ovenbird: http://static.wixstatic.com/media/76ca65_cceb989524c54e58bc5fba198a430f5c.png_srz_940_385_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_png_srz Check it out for yourself. Dave Leatherman Fort Collins -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/SNT148-W50B21F2503558704AD2760C1300%40phx.gbl. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
