I wasn’t very close to this\u00a0bird and it shows in the image quality. And several of the photos aren’t as sharp as they should be but I thought the behavior was sufficiently interesting to overlook those deficiencies.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6812b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6812b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Sibley describes Townsend’s Solitaires as “uncommon” and based on my experience with them that’s\u00a0an accurate assessment in my area. But yesterday\u00a0in the Wasatch Mountains, in contradiction to the “solitaire”\u00a0portion of their common name, I\u00a0encountered three of them together.<\/p>\n
This one landed on a Hawthorn bush and was eyeing the berries that are left this late in the season. ‘He’ (once again I don’t know the sex of the bird) did pluck one and I wondered how he made his choice. After all, there’s many to choose from and you’d think he’d choose the one that was easiest to get at. Or maybe he could discern quality differences in them and was willing to work a little harder to get the berry that would likely\u00a0taste best.<\/p>\n
My guess would be that he’d pluck one of them right in front of him because they were most accessible. But no, he had to make life difficult and even a little dangerous.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6812c-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6812c-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
He\u00a0had his eye on this one, the one marked with the red arrow. And it was quite a challenging berry to pluck safely, especially considering that wicked-looking spine just to its right.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6813b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6813b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
He took off and even in flight he\u00a0may have been making his decision as to how to approach the plucking process.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6814b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6814b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
But even at this point he seemed a little tentative about how he’d get it done. That’s really a mean-looking spine.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6815b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6815b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
In the end he was careful to avoid the spine as he plucked the berry without really landing…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6817b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6817b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
and took his prize to a…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6820b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6820b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
safer and more stable perch.<\/p>\n
At this point it looked like he might be testing the berry for a few moments to see if it met his standards. Apparently it didn’t.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6827b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6827b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
So he deliberately dropped it…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6828b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"townsends-solitaire-6828b-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\n
and it fell to the ground without him even watching its descent. In my experience birds usually watch something fall if they’ve dropped it accidentally.<\/p>\n
So this bird demonstrated his discerning tastes two separate times – when\u00a0he chose a more difficult berry to pluck when easier ones were readily available and when\u00a0he eventually rejected the chosen berry.<\/p>\n
His picky eating\u00a0habits\u00a0remind me of several of my friends.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
PS – Temps were as low as +15 F. in the mountains yesterday at an elevation that\u00a0wasn’t really\u00a0all that\u00a0high. Winter really is on its way.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In fact, the solitaire demonstrated his fussiness about food on two separate occasions and in two different ways.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64636,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,392,4250],"tags":[4253,4254,4252,4255,3097,4251,311],"class_list":["post-64626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-townsends-solitaire","tag-fussy-eater","tag-hawthorn-berries","tag-myadestes-townsendi","tag-rejecting-food","tag-spine","tag-townsends-solitaire","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/townsends-solitaire-6813b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-gOm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64626","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}