Bird Watching : Fat Little Seed Eating Bird Seen Through Bedroom Window : Help Identify!

The fat little rust-polled bird has been a friend (drawn to Pam, most likely) since early 2009. A seed eater no doubt; we knew this from bird-watching the feathered beastie as it foraged along the ground, scratching and pecking like a chicken--only cuter.

But...what might its name be?

TWO CLUES

Size: Bigger than a sparrow, smaller than a robin. Way smaller than a breadbox.

Colors: A lot more than we'd realized, as the photos show.

When I'm out and about the acreage, these little seed eaters tend to be tricky to photograph. Generally mobile, and generally keeping their distance. But when I got up the morning and raised the west side bedroom window shade, the photo op was obvious. SeedBird was busily pecking away at the mother lode underneath a very special mesquite tree.

It was unaware of my presence. There was nothing but a double pane of glass between us.

Time to zip over to the office, grab the camera, and take -click!-click!-click!- picture after picture. Which leads to my caveat, rationalization, and excuse all rolled into one: If you decide there are way too many photos on this page, I can claim they're needed to help identify this particular bird!

Besides, you've got it easy. I had to cull down from a total of 115 snapshots to get this batch.

The first major discovery uncovered when the photos were blown up on the computer was the fact that my Canon PowerShot camera actually takes better pictures in "EASY" mode than it does in "AUTO" mode. They're both totally workable, but the AUTO shots tended to make the window glass between the camera and the bird more obvious until the snapshots were edited in Windows.

On the other hand, AUTO displays exposure and lens opening settings, which EASY does not.

Secondly, it was interesting to see that this bird's base color appears to be gray. To the naked eye, it had always appeared a bit more toward the brown side. But I now suspect my eyeball was ignoring (and blending) all the other colors that are actually embedded in the feather coat.

The rust-colored poll we knew about, but the black spots on the big, the orange under the rear end, or the pink legs?

Not so much.

Oh, you can tell I was starting to experiment with the photos? Black and white effects, different camera settings, all that?

One of the most fascinating photos (above, third from bottom) shows SeedBird nosediving into the vegatative clutter like a coyote diving through deep snow to nab a foraging mouse. The total picture taking session couldn't have run much longer than ten or fifteen minutes, That was long enough when you've neglected to get dressed before clicking the camera.

Yet, brief session or not, I learned more about this bird from studying these photos than from the total of the previous three years of eyeball observation.

The location helped a lot. Not only was it convenient for photography, but the seed muncher clearly felt more secure right there than in a lot of other spots. The house wall, only a few feet away, blocked any predators that might try to sneak up from the east. Overhead, the mesquite branches blocked possible aerial attack. The feeding place is actially in a shallow hollow .

Cool beans.

The more I studied the photos, the more it looked like the sort of bird you'd have if they made one by committee--or if a new species was produced by a sparrow getting raped by a robin.

Now, have you ever taken photos with a fisheye lens? Those can get pretty ridiculous, make a dog's nose look bigger than the whole rest of the animal, stuff like that.

But what (the thought occurred) would happen if you applied a fisheye lens effect to an already very fat little bird? Might the results be gross? Grotesque? Hilarious?

You be the judge.

Enough with the weirdness?

Okay, okay.

Just two more nice closeups and we'll call it a page. In the meantime, any and assistance in identifying this winged seed eater will be deeply appreciated.

One thing these photos of our fat little feathered friend make clear: Our birdies at New Moon Ranch are anything but underfed!