An Exciting Month At Cattail Chronicles
Leucistic Black Bird
Here is a first for us. We learned a new word and saw a relatively rare bird. The word is leucistic. It is a genetic deficiency resulting in a lack of pigment. The reason we needed to learn this new word is that we had a young leucistic red-winged blackbird. While many of the images of leucistic black birds are not entirely white. There are white patches at various locations on the birds. Ours was completely white.
We first saw the white bird shortly after it fledged. Its mother was still feeding it in the field. [I may have some photos of this activity]. For a couple of weeks, we watched it flying around on our side of the pond. The behavior of the bird was already significantly different than that of other red wings. It tended to hide more. When landing on a tree branch, it would immediately burrow farther into the foliage. When it landed on a tuft of grass, it almost immediately jumped down. Burrowing into the deeper grass. Given how bright it was, this is obvious survival behavior. I am not sure if it helped to extend its life, though. It has been over a week since we last saw it.
Black Capped Night Herons
In other news, we have had a pair of black capped night herons living on our pond for most of this summer. We have seen the female out collecting nesting materials. The literature on behaviors indicates that they nest in groups similarly to Great Blue Herons. We have not seen more than three at any one time, and that early in the summer. By the end of the month we were seeing two juvenile birds. I don't know if they may be contemplating building a rookery on our pond? Immediately adjacent to the pond here are only a couple of large cottonwoods, though we have several areas where there is new cottonwood growth, only a few years old. We also have a large expanse of cattails around the pond. So it could be a hospitable location for a rookery (is that an acceptable term?).
Juvenile Black Capped Night Heron
In Cattail Chronicles News
I have been reworking our website. Changing the prints that we offer for sale. Depending on how you view it, I am running a little behind on the upgrades that I want to make to the site, and I am expanding our product lines. To my way of thinking, the site will never be DONE. There will always be changes that are being made. I want to try new things, offer different products for sale, and so on. If you follow our blogs, you will have seen our blog on the new half-frame print stand that we are offering for sale. I am really happy with this product and am hoping for a good response from the public. It is currently for sale on our website, www.cattailchronicles.com
The website will be ready for a Labor Day sale starting August 29. Stay tuned! To be notified of this sale and other events, sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of this page.
We are offering a limited number of prints already framed. Some of the frames are simple frames, and some may be interesting frames that we have found in various thrift stores we visit on occasion. These are on display in our gallery at Silver Paw Studio in Fort Collins.
Lanterns in the Light with a distressed red frame
This is one of my favorite prints on sale at our gallery inside Silver Paw Studio.