1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nI don’t question Laura’s statement but it’s still hard for me to imagine. This bird’s crop looks to me like it’s about ready to pop.<\/p>\n
The crop is a thin-walled expanded portion of the alimentary tract used for storing food prior to digestion. We tend to think of only birds having crops but they’re also found in many invertebrate animals including gastropods (snails and slugs), earthworms, leeches and insects.<\/p>\n
But not all birds have crops. Most raptors do but owls don’t. Chickens and\u00a0 turkeys have crops but geese don’t. All of which makes this biologist marvel once again at the processes and complexities of evolution.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
OK, now for the unrelated avian mystery.<\/p>\n
The following photo is one of the lowest quality images I’ve ever posted to Feathered Photography. You’ll probably wonder why I even bothered to take it. I could explain my motivation for taking the photo but it would take more space and more time than it’s worth. I’ll simply say that it was taken through my dirty patio door window and my active focus point was never able to lock on to the backlit bird so it’s soft. Really soft.<\/p>\n
But it’s sharp enough to show why I’m puzzled about it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/house-sparrow-8059-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"house-sparrow-8059-ron-dudley\\"")
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This is a young House Sparrow perched on my wrought iron bird feeder stand. I took the photo a couple of days ago but never looked at it until last night.<\/p>\n
What in the world is going on with that bright white upper mandible? The lower mandible is the normal color for the species at this age but I’ve never seen anything like that upper mandible.<\/p>\n
My first thought was that the bird may have a stained bill from some foreign substance but the color seems too uniform and too precisely confined to the upper mandible for that to be the likely explanation. Then I wondered if it was some kind of weird optical effect from light reflection but I don’t think that explains it either.<\/p>\n
This is the only photo I took of the bird. Cropping tightly on the bill doesn’t reveal any more detail because the bird is so soft.<\/p>\n
I’m stumped. Any thoughts?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And an avian mystery. How about a little help from my friends?<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89724,"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":[5,334,450],"tags":[452,5357,146,5358,5361,451,5360,5359],"class_list":["post-89715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-engorged-crop","tag-flight","tag-function-of-crop","tag-house-sparrow-with-a-white-bill","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-what-animals-have-crops","tag-what-birds-dont-have-a-crop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/red-tailed-hawk-5515b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-nl1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89715","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=89715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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