Photography of Birds – Set # 33 | H.J. Ruiz

Large sandpipers were once popular game for bird hunters. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many a fashionable restaurant featured gourmet meals with willet or curlew. Now shorebirds are protected, but only after many species were brought to the edge of extinction. The common names of large pipers often derive from the hunting era. Yellowlegs, for instance, are also called tattlers because these high-strung birds would be the first to raise a noisy alarm when shooters were spotted.

Shiny Cowbird

Like most other cowbirds, it is an obligate brood parasite, laying its eggs in the nests of many other bird species such as the rufous-collared sparrow. Different host species show different responses to their nests being parasitised, with behaviours ranging from accepting and caring for the cowbird eggs, to rejecting the eggs from the nest.

6 thoughts on “Photography of Birds – Set # 33”

Indira on May 1, 2020 at 12:14 pm said:

Two kinds of lovely birds!!

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- H.J. for avian101 on May 1, 2020 at 3:48 pm said:
  
  Thanks, Indira. 🙂
  
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Jane's Heartsong on May 1, 2020 at 1:38 pm said:

You can see the markings so well on the greater yellowlegs and the shiny Cowbird is definitely living up to its name.

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H.J. for avian101 on May 1, 2020 at 3:54 pm said:

Thanks so much, Jane. 🙂

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bayphotosbydonna on May 2, 2020 at 7:52 pm said:

Nice captures, HJ! I liked learning about Yellowlegs being also called tattlers! I also did not know that Willets and Curlews were once considered a gourmet meal. 😦 I was photographing a beautiful Willet today!

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- H.J. for avian101 on May 2, 2020 at 9:04 pm said:
  
  I know, the old-timers used to eat everything that moved! Thank you, Donna. 🙂
  
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H.J. Ruiz – Avian101