{"id":434,"date":"2010-09-01T14:35:08","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T20:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.wordpress.com\/?p=434"},"modified":"2011-05-29T07:19:29","modified_gmt":"2011-05-29T13:19:29","slug":"red-winged-blackbird-with-a-crossed-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/01\/red-winged-blackbird-with-a-crossed-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-winged Blackbird With a Crossed Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This morning while out photographing birds at a local wildlife refuge I came across this Red-winged Blackbird with a strongly crossed bill, which of course is not typical of the species.\u00a0 I’ve seen a few mildly crossed bills in this and\u00a0other species in the past but never one quite this pronounced in a species where it isn’t “normal”.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"red-winged<\/a><\/p>\n

Red-winged Blackbird with a crossed bill, perched on curley dock<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>There are species of birds in North America that have crossed bills as a species trait – the Red Crossbill and the White-winged Crossbill.\u00a0 Their crossed bills are an adaptation for extracting seeds from cones.\u00a0 Seeing this RWBB with a crossed bill naturally got me thinking about evolution.\u00a0 Variations occur throughout nature since each individual inherits a different combination of genes from its parents.\u00a0 This\u00a0 particular variation would likely be selected against in RWBB’s and would not persist since they do not typically pry seeds from cones.\u00a0 However, one can see how this same variation in the ancestors of todays crossbills would be the genetic fuel for the crossed bill trait\u00a0they all exhibit today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 This morning while out photographing birds at a local wildlife refuge I came across this Red-winged Blackbird with a strongly crossed bill, which of course is not typical of the species.\u00a0 I’ve seen a few mildly crossed bills in this and\u00a0other species in the past but never one quite this pronounced in a species where it isn’t “normal”. \u00a0 Red-winged Blackbird with a crossed bill, perched on curley dock \u00a0 \u00a0There are species of birds in North America that have crossed bills as a species trait – the Red Crossbill and the White-winged Crossbill.\u00a0 Their crossed bills are an adaptation for extracting seeds from cones.\u00a0 Seeing this RWBB with a crossed bill naturally got me thinking about evolution.\u00a0 Variations occur throughout nature since each individual inherits a different combination of genes from its parents.\u00a0 This\u00a0 particular variation would likely be selected against in RWBB’s and would not persist since they do not typically pry seeds from cones.\u00a0 However, one can see how this same variation in the ancestors of todays crossbills would be the genetic fuel for the crossed bill trait\u00a0they all exhibit today.\u00a0 Ron \u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,390],"tags":[23,58,100,101,127,264],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-red-winged-blackbirds","tag-adaptation","tag-blackbird","tag-cross-bill","tag-crossed-bill","tag-evolution","tag-red-winged-blackbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-70","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}