Northern Waterthrush (Parkesia noveboracensis)

The Northern Waterthrush is one of springtime's warbler delights here in New York City. You can find him bobbing his tail by your local babbling brook. Of course, he's migratory and will only be seen in these parts for a few weeks each year en route between the tropics and his summer home in Northern Canada.

I saw this individual by Triplets Bridge. I could (reasonably confidently) distinguish this Northern Waterthrush from the very-similar Louisiana Waterthrush with two field marks: 1) the chest striping that continues up to the throat, and 2) the slight yellow tint to the supercilium (that's the plumage line between the beak and the back of the head).

Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)

The "GHOW," to use the mellifluous alpha code for this species, is an American treasure. Of course, it's a large nocturnal raptor renowned for its haunting hoot, but did you know that the Great Horned Owl also prefers to eat its prey whole, as one scrumptious melange of pelage and nutty gizzards? A few hours later it will regurgitate a finished pellet of remnants.

This individual caused quite a stir when it parked itself in a tree near the Central Park boathouse this winter.

"Squirrel, it satisfies" - your neighborhood GHOW, [owl wink]

Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus) [Special Leucistic Edition]

Friends of the feathered --

Welcome back. Let us not speak of the season past, for though NY was spared winter's icy whip, our climate was nevertheless "foggy, raw, and dull" (Henry V, Act 3, Scene 5).

Spring has dawned, and her rosy-fingers are waving in the birds by the cartload. To begin the spring 2016 edition of Theo's Aviary, I share with you a Hermit Thrush I saw near Triplets Bridge in Central Park NY, 4/24/2016 AD. But this is no ordinary hermit thrush... this is a Leucistic individual!! (click on any of the pictures below for a higher resolution image)

To aid in your contemplation of this unusual bird, I submit the following passage:

"And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues - every stately or lovely emblazoning - the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge - pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel fazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale [Ed: or Hermit Thrush?] was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?" 

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale" 

An utterly beautiful bird. Yes, wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

 (For those curious, there is good comparison of Albinism vs. Leucism at the British Trust for Ornithology website)