Mother Redwing feeding Chick: July 2020

All of the bird species where I have seen parent and chick together seem to follow the same pattern:

  • chick makes noise, opens beak and flutters wings without flying:
Red-winged Blackbird chick
  • adult, tired of being pestered, delivers food:
Mother Red-winged Blackbird with chick
Mother Red-winged Blackbird with chick
Mother Red-winged Blackbird with chick
Mother Red-winged Blackbird with chick
Mother Red-winged Blackbird with chick

In penguin colonies, chicks can be so annoying that adults begin to run away. Chicks then chase them up and down throughout the colony. Food is eventually given.

On this day, I walked below the bluffs at lovely Bluffer’s Park:

Other flyers:

Cabbage White Butterfly
American Robin
Ring-billed Gulls

Some botany:

Amur Cork Tree (Phellodendron amurense)
Willow Pine Cone Gall
Cottonwood seeds (“cotton”)
Yarrow (Achillea millefolia)
Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis)
Silvery Cinquefoil (Potentilla argentea)
Pinkweed (Persicaria pensylvanica)
Squirrel-tail Grass (Hordeum jubatum)
Black Locust (Robinea pseudoacacia)
Purple Loosestrtife (Lythrum salicaria)
Purple-flowering Raspberry (Rubus odoratus)
Black Raspberry (Rubus occidentalis)
White Mulberry (Morus alba)
Canada Thistle (Cirsium arvense)
Indian-hemp (Apocynum cannabinum)
Highbush-cranberry (Viburnum opulus)
Tartarian Honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica)
Crown Vetch (Securigera varia)
St. John’s-wort (Hypericum perforatum)
Red Clover (Trifolium pratense)
Gray Dogwood (Cornus foemina)
Birdfoot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatis)
Crack Willow (Salix fragilis)
Sandbar Willow (Salix exigua)
Reed Canary Grass (Phalaris arundinacea)
Bird Vetch (Vicia cracca)
Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron annuus)
Chicory (Cichorium intybus)
Red-osier (Cornus sericea)
Common Burdock (Arctium minus)
Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium)
Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus inserta)
Queen-Anne’s-lace (Daucus carota)
Curled Dock (Rumex crispus)
Ox-eye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare)

NATURE POETRY

Rais’d are the dripping oars—    
Silent the boat: the lake,    
Lovely and soft as a dream,    
Swims in the sheen of the moon.      – Matthew Arnold (1822–88)

Miles Hearn

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