Wonderful photos!!

I was so surprised, gratified, and excited to get offers and copies of so many marvelous and adorable bushtit photos yesterday.   Thank you to everyone!   I'm planning to post them gradually over the next few months -- just one or two a day at most -- so we can all enjoy them.  And please keep them coming!  I love to watch my bushtits, but I am abysmal at remembering to make a photographic record of what I do.  A few students have been pretty good at it.  But not me.

I thought that today would be a good day to mention that my BNA (Birds of North America) bushtit chapter is a good source for basic bushtit information.  The behavioral descriptions are 99% from my own research in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona where the first 25 years of my research took place.  I'm currently working on the revision which will include many new Pacific NW bushtit idiosyncrasies.

BTW, Arizona bushtits (Psaltriparus minimus plumbeous) and  coastal Pacific NW bushtits (Psaltriparus minimus minimus) have many of the same quirky behavioral traits, but some very interesting differences which I will be talking about in this blog and detailing in my book.  What I don't know yet is if these are intrinsic subspecies differences or just the result of entirely different environments:  desert mountains vs wet coastal forests and brush, high predation rates vs low, etc.  

Time will tell.

 I chose these two photos generously provided by Russel Smith today because bushtits in Portland will soon be building nests.   Yes, they start in February-- sometimes as early as January.  In fact, one year in Seattle I had nestlings hatch in mid-February!!

Bushtit nests are made primarily of a combination of spider web and lichen as the two velcro together in a magical way.

The photo above is of a female (note the yellow eye) with lichen.  The photo to the right is a male (dark brown eye) with spider web.

Enjoy!