MP>That is what I meant, featherless-headed jays.    When I was much
  >younger, we did have a male cardinal that would show up bald.  Thing is, it
  >was bald year-around so that it might be molting never occurred to us.  My
  >mom used to call it "Baldy" and would feed it. She'd joke that its mate
  >probably did that to him.  

You'd think it would only molt at a certain time of year. They say
online late summer into fall is when to expect that. If he was
bald year round maybe you could blame his 'mate'..
(That's what I did..)    B)

RM>> Bald Eagles are more common in British Columbia. A friend of
  >> mine wend hiking there and took a picture showing probably 30
  >> or so of them around a small lake in the trees. I'd have thought
  >> they'd be more territorial than that but I suppose there was
  >> lots of food available..

MP>I bet they are more common there.  They love the mountains and lakes.  Like
  >you, I also suspect they are less territorial when there are plenty of
  >resources available.

Yes, I didn't think there were any here in Ontario until we saw one
the last couple of years, but there was nothing to suggest there
was more than one, although you'd hope there was a pair at least.

I visited the neighbours a couple of days ago and they had a couple
of wheelbarrows blocking an area where people would often park
on their property and just past those there were a couple of small
flagpoles. He explained to me that it was because some Killdeers
(a type of Plover which are birds that spend a lot of time on the
ground and wading in shallow water) had built a 'nest' there.
That nest was just a slight hollow in some gravel on the ground,
and he was trying to protect it until the eggs hatched.
As of yesterday the only change there was that instead of the
original 2 eggs, there were now 4 of them.

RM>> I don't think I've seen any Falcons around here..

MP>Yeah, we had at least one that nested on the top of the last office
  >building I worked in.  They moved the nesting box to the top of our
  >building before they tore down the (much taller) tallest building in town.

They had a story on the news a couple of days ago about Geese that
were nesting on tall buildings in Toronto I think, but they had to
keep sending wildlife people to rescue them once the eggs hatched.
Seems the mothers didn't think about how they were going to get
the babies down to the ground after they hatched. They were going
up to the roofs of the buldings and catching the mother in a big
net and putting the goslings in a bag and taking them all down to
the ground and then across a busy highway to where there was a good
sized body of water and letting them go there..

The guy they talked to said they have to do this for dozens of
geese in similar situations every year..

This could be one source of the term, 'Bird Brain'..   B)

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 * SLMR Rob  * When I erase a word with a pencil, where does it go?
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