G is for Great Gray Owl -- we counted ourselves extraordinarily lucky to run into a traffic jam one June day in Yellowstone, assuming it was caused by a bear sighting, only to discover that it was caused by this beautiful owl.

S/he was just sitting by the road watching the endless stream of people getting out of their cars to gawk.

F is for Flame-colored Tanager.  This is a bird that lives mostly in Mexico and Central America, but occasionally shows up in the Southwestern US.  I was lucky enough to see this one in Madera Canyon, in Southeast Arizona near Tucson.

[Gray-crowned Rosy Finch]

And one more Finch:   the Gray-crowned Rosy Finch.  We took this photo in the Canadian Rockies this past summer; right at the boundary between a subalpine and alpine environment (treeline, basically).  This finch is a master of extreme conditions!

[F]

Another entry in the Finch category.  These are House Finches; I took the photos during a very destructive ice storm a couple of winters ago.  My feeders were well stocked and the birdbath was heated, but they still look a little bewildered.

[Franklin's Gul]

Up next...the Franklin's Gull

I took this photo in Southeast Arizona; the only wetland in that arid region big enough was a wastewater holding pond, which is where this bird is!

[F]

F is for Finch...there are many different finches, but the photos below show two of the finches collectively known as "Darwin's Finches", since they formed part of the evidence Charles Darwin used when describing how species evolve through natural selection/adaptation.

The first photo is a Vampire Finch.  This bird is a subspecies of the Sharp-beaked Ground Finch in the Galapagos.

Excerpted from Wikipedia:
"This bird is most famous for its unusual diet. The Vampire Finch occasionally feeds by drinking the blood of other birds, chiefly the Nazca and Blue-footed Boobies, pecking at their skin with their sharp beaks until blood is drawn (Schluter & Grant 1984). Curiously, the boobies do not offer much resistance against this. "

The second photo is another species of Darwin's Finch, but I don't know which one...

[F]

Woo-hoo, after midnight in the Eastern US!

I'm excited to start the letter F because F is for Frigatebird, and I have two lovely shots of a male Great Frigatebird.

We took these in the Galapagos.  The first photo shows the male doing his courtship display...he puffs out his chest, flaps his wings, and utters a strange call when any female flys overhead.

The second photo shows a male incubating eggs.

Patti - you're looking at that mockingbird as if you trust it not at all!

Yes, I think I was half expecting it to start a conversation after it approached me so aggressively!

Patti

[E]

E is for Espanola Mockingbird...this is a mockingbird that only lives one place: on the island of Espanola in the Galapagos.  We took both of these photos there.  The second photo illustrates the fact that Galapagos birds are very tame, since the islands are free of land predators (including humans, until fairly recently, in evolutionary time).

[E]

And one more entry...this is the back side of an Elegant Trogon; I'm very good at taking photos of the backs of birds.  This bird was in the mountains of Southern Arizona; very near the Mexican border.

And this tiny owl is an Elf Owl; he was nesting in a hole in a saguaro cactus in a pretty city desert park in Tuscon Arizona.  Our guide managed to catch him as he left his nest hole in the evening and hit him with the spotlight.

E is for Eastern Towhee...this photo I took in Rhode Island; it's a male and female pair.  The female is in front, with the browner coloring, while the male's head is very black.

Mourning Dove..
(Zenaida macroura)
Cool fact: Mourning Doves feed their nestlings crop milk or "pigeon milk," which is secreted by the crop lining. This is an extremely nutritious food with more protein and fat than is found in either cow or human milk. Crop milk, which is regurgitated by both adults, is the exclusive food of hatchlings for three days, after which it is gradually replaced by a diet of seeds. 

I thought I'd share one of the photos of our backyard Mourning Doves...we hosted a nesting pair for several years until one of the pair was killed.  We don't know if a car, cat, or Cooper's Hawk got it; we found it dead in the alley one spring after nest-building had started, then nest building promptly stopped, so we're pretty sure it was a member of our nesting pair that was killed.  A squirrel started using the nest platform for a shelter, and no Mourning Doves have since used the platform...very sad.  But this is a photo of one of the young'uns with the second one hidden behind its parent.

Dwarf Cassowary

I would hate to have to wear that thing on my head!

but, Patti...his feet are all wet!

Yes, I could have posted the photo with his entire head underwater, but then you wouldn't have been able to see much of him.

OK...having had another burst of motivation, I decided to post the picture of the American Dipper in fishing mode: