The Return of Bird of the Week: Greater Sage Grouse
The Greater Sage Grouse is an iconic species of the Western United States. It’s also near-threatened. Preserving its habitat is one of the hot button issues of conservation in the United States. This is North America’s biggest grouse, with the males sometimes weighing more than six pounds. Thy are famous for their lekking behavior: the males assemble in a relatively small area to engage in a complex display and compete for the attention and breeding privileges. Mostly the females show a studied indifference to the males’ conduct. Greater Sage Grouse are sagebrush obligates, meaning they depend on relatively undisturbed sagebrush…
The Return of Bird of the Week — Osprey
For about three years (187 weeks, in fact) WC featured a Bird of the Week post on Saturdays that was cross-posted here at The Mudflats. The idea was to share bird photos with readers, maybe provide a little mostly accurate information about birds, and perhaps sell some bird photos and help pay for WC’s expensive avian photography habit. The series stopped when WC ran out of Alaska bird photos that were decent enough to share. That was about a year ago. After a massive, sometimes tedious review of a chunk of WC’s library of bird photos, WC is feeling inspired. Bird…