[D]

D is also for Dark-eyed Junco.  Here are two samples:

1)  The first is the "slate-colored" variety, which we took in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where they nest once the elevation gets over about 5000 feet.  They usually don't summer this far south, but make an exception for the higher elevations of the Appalachians.

2) The second is the Oregon variety, which we took in the Bighorn Mountains of central Wyoming.

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.

D is for Dipper (American Dipper).  We took this photo in Yellowstone in fall, but we've seen dippers diving under rushing water in many western mountainous national parks.  They feed mostly on aquatic insects but will also eat fish eggs and even small fish.

[Cormorants]

Cormorants

I will mention several types of cormorants in the United States. 

Gayle

And here's a contribution from the Galapagos.  We took these photos on the island of Fernandina.  This is the Flightless Cormorant, also known as the Galapagos Cormorant.  Due to the absence of land-based predators (until human arrival brought rats, dogs, cats, etc.), these cormorants no longer need wings to escape.  Since their wings don't give them any evolutionary advantage, they're gradually losing them.  As you can see in the photo of the single cormorant, their legs and feet are incredibly thick and strong; they use their legs for propulsion in the water rather than wings.  They still maintain the habit of holding their pitiful residual wings out to dry, like other cormorants.

The first photo is a single cormorant, the second photo is a pair with a chick in between (and another bird on a nest behind them).

C is for Curl-crested Aracari, another bird from Amazonian Peru.  Many birds in the Amazon jungle spend their time high up in the tree canopy, where it's not always easy to see them from the ground.  I took this photo from a high canopy tower in the Tambopata reserve built for the purpose of looking down into the canopy.  This bird is in the toucan family, and they're primarily fruit eaters, as this pair is demonstrating.

[C]

C is for Casqued Oropendola -- a very strange looking bird that I saw in the Peruvian jungle.  They were hard to miss because they are very vocal (sort of like visiting a swamp in North America full of Red-winged Blackbirds).  There were bunches of them together in a nest tree, with each pair having a long woven basket nest hanging from the end of a branch.

[C]

This photo of a Common Raven we took in Bryce Canyon National Park.  He's a member of the same family as the Clark's Nutcracker above!  They all like to hang out at tourist attractions and try to beg free food.

[C]

C is for Clark's Nutcracker, one of my favorite birds!  We see this bird in the higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains.  They don't migrate, but instead manage to survive a snow-packed Rocky Mountain winter by caching food to eat throughout winter.  In the Northern Rockies, where we usually see them, they cache mainly the high-calorie, highly nutritious pine nuts of the Whitebark pine.  They have a sublingual pouch into which they can gather lots of pine nuts to carry off and hide.  There is some concern about the bird (and other animals, including Grizzly Bears) who depend on the Whitebark Pine, since its populations are being devastated by the pine beetle, who is aided and abetted by climate change.

We took this photo at Yellowstone National Park, but we've seen then many places in the western mountains.

OK...since I think we've spent two days on the letter B (there are a lot of B's), and it's after midnight in the Eastern US, I'll start the letter C!  I feel a little like a character on Sesame Street.  Anyway...

  Ohhh were still doing B's

Mon and Tues A's
Wed and Thurs B's
Fri and Sat C's

 

Sorry...I assumed since we skipped our second day of A's and spent both Tuesday and Wednesday on the B's, we were ready for C's.  I'll be good and get back to Aafke's original schedule.

[C]

And my final entry for tonight (more tomorrow evening unless someone else beats me to it), it the Common Yellowthroat, a beautiful little warbler I see with some regularity in damp places.  This one I photographed, like most of the warblers I've been lucky enough to get pictures of, on Lake Erie in May.

[C]

And to add to my collection of photos of birds taken from the wrong angle, here is a Collared Trogon.  I saw this bird in the Peruvian jungle...it has a spectacularly beautiful black and white pattern on its tail and wings; it's too bad the photo doesn't show that very well.

[C]

Here is a Chestnut-sided Warbler; taken on the shores of Lake Erie during Spring Migration this past May.

[C]

OK...since I think we've spent two days on the letter B (there are a lot of B's), and it's after midnight in the Eastern US, I'll start the letter C!  I feel a little like a character on Sesame Street.  Anyway...

C is for Cedar Waxwing.

I took this photo in the fair city of Rochester, in the gorge during the 2006 falcon watcher's weekend.  It's nice of the local wildlife to give us a thrill when the falcon watching is slow.

Sorry for the rear shot, but I think it's their best side anyway.

[B]

OK...you will be glad to know that though I have not run out of personal photos of birds that start with B (Bald Eagle, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Barbary Dove, Band-tailed Pigeon, Black-headed Grosbeak, Burrowing Owl, Black-throated Sparrow, for example), I have run out of energy! 

So here is my final entry in the "B" category:  Blue Grouse

We took this photo in Glacier National Park.  Usually, grouse scare the bejeezus out of us by flushing as we hike by...however, this female stayed her ground because she had several chicks in the flowers below her.  She calmly cooed at them while we snapped a photo and then gave her some space.

[B]

B is also for Barn Swallows...these two are fledglings, which may be why I caught them in the rare act of sitting still!  They're probably waiting for a food delivery.