Gray-Headed Chickadee (Poecile cinctus)
The Gray-Headed Chickadee, also known as "Siberian Tit," breeds throughout northern Europe and Asia, from Norway eastward to northwestern North America. In Canada, the Gray-Headed Chickadee is primarily found north of the Arctic Circle in northern Yukon and northwestern Northwest Territories. Gray-Headed Chickadees are generally sedentary, though some populations become nomadic during winter months. Like other chickadees, they form mixed-species flocks with other passerines outside the breeding season. The female excavates and constructs the nest while the male guards against rival males and predators. During incubation, the male feeds the female, who remains on the nest throughout the incubation period. Each birds stores as much as 3 Kilograms of food in cavities, holes, and under bark to help it through the frigid, dark winters.
The Gray-Headed Chickadee can be distinguished from the similar Boreal Chickadee by its greyer cap, extensive white cheeks and dusty flanks. Juvenile Boreal Chickadees have a greyer crown and hoarser voice than adults and are sometimes misidentified as Gray-Headed Chickadees. Although the Gray-Headed Chickadee is rare but apparently stable in Canada, populations in Eurasia have declined considerably because of human disturbance and especially logging.
Lone Pine Publications: Birds of Canada
At first glance it seems that when nature's treasures were being distributed among North America's birds, sparrows in general (and the clay-colored in particular) must have waited near the end of the line. Next to the party-dress finery of the wood warblers, sparrows seem to be outfitted like chain-gang workers, clothed mostly in a blend of uniform grey and commonplace brown. As songsters, too, they are far behind the music hall voices to orioles, or the exquisite, liquid calls of thrushes. The clay-colorer sparrow typifies the generally undistinguished musicianship of the sparrow family, announcing himself with a sonorous, insect-like call of three or four buzzes.
Shearwaters are long-winged seabirds that fly with shallow, rapid wingbeats and stiff-winged glides. Outside the breeding season, Pink-Footed Shearwaters are birds of the open ocean, generally seen on land only infrequently. Among swarms of other shearwaters encountered at sea from April to November, the Pink-Footed Shearwater is second only to the Sooty Shearwater as the most common shearwater off Canada's Pacific Coast. Although they tend to stay well off-shore, small numbers of Pink-Footed Shearwaters may be seen from strategic coastal locations with the aid of a telescope.
The term "sea gull" is often a misleading one, for many gulls spend much of their lives far from the ocean. The California Gull - itself somewhat misnamed - breeds primarily on islands in lakes of the interior plains of the West. This opportunistic feeder not only plunges after lake fish but also takes cutworms, grubs, small rodents, and other agricultural pests in freshly plowed fields - habits that make it welcome to farmers. Indeed, to the first Mormon settlers in Utah, the California gull seemed to be divinely sent.