The approximately 12-inch long body of the adult Belted Kingfisher, Megaceryle alcyon, is generally blue-gray with a clearly defined white collar and blue-gray chest below the collar. The lower male breast is dull white, but the female sports a rust colored band extending down and back on either side of the lower breast. The head feathers of both rise in a striking ragged crest.
The wood duck, Aix sponsa, is one of the most distinctive and beautiful dabblers (i.e., ducks that don’t usually dive for food, but rather skim food from the surface or feed by tipping the head and neck forward. https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Dabblers_vs._Divers.html ). The helmet-shaped head of the male is iridescent green and outlined with white slashes. The eyes and upper beak are red. The helmet of the female is plain, but the eyes are outlined dramatically in white.
Related to sandpipers, the American Woodcock, Scolopax minor, or “timberdoodle,” is a shorebird that doesn’t live at the shore! Rather than live along bodies of water, this well-camouflaged, mottled, light brown bird inhabits deciduous forests where it spends most of its time feeding on the forest floor and nesting in depressions on the ground.
Cardinalis cardinalis, the Northern Cardinal, is the state bird for seven eastern states. The male colors are a bright scarlet, although the plumage of the upper body and crest is tinged with gray, and the bill is a dull red. The area between the bill and eyes and the throat are black.
A large, stately, blue-gray bird the Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias, has wide black stripe over the eye; long, yellow legs; a sinuous neck with special vertebra; and a dagger-like bill. Its shaggy appearance is due to wing plumes, specialized chest feathers that continually grow and fray as the bird combs them with a fringed claw. When preening, a heron applies the resulting “powder down” to underpart feathers as a protection from organic oils and slime.
Avian Note Art 