Hokey Pokey???? "A common bird of the Pacific Coast chaparral, the Wrentit can be difficult to see as it skulks through the dense scrub. Its taxonomy, or placement in the classification of bird families, has proven very difficult to pin down. It's not closely related to any other North American species."allaboutboids
Tags: Wrentit wrentit bath Los Liones southern california birds Bird watching Birdwatching Los Angeles inceville pacific palisades birds pekabo90401 Chamaea fasciata sx-50 canon canon SX-50 SOOC SOOC Sunday
© All Rights Reserved
The Wrentits are very stealthy within the tangle of brambles. They pop out then dispapear.
Tags: pacific palisades highlands birds pekabo90401 rare bird Wrentit wallow wrentit Bird watching Birdwatching Los Angeles southern california birds
© All Rights Reserved
"Ever wonder whether biologists' constant renaming and reshuffling of organisms from one taxonomical pigeonhole to another has any actual importance in the real world?
You could ask the wrentit. A tiny bird that lives in stands of chaparral along the California coast, the wrentit was just reassigned from one family of birds to another -- and as a result, it's now protected under one of America's oldest environmental laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (MBTA).
How'd this happen? It has to do with a group of scientists who discuss bird taxonomy in the U.S., and how the agency responsible for enforcing the MBTA follows those scientists' lead in determining which birds are protected by the law.
...
Taxonomic categories reflect, as closely as we can determine, which groups of organisms share common ancestors, and how those common ancestors were themselves related to each other. As we learn more about how we all evolved, through DNA analysis and other means, we learn that some of our old notions about how each of us fit into the big evolutionary jigsaw puzzle need to be updated. When that happens, taxonomy often needs to change as well.
The wrentit, Chamaea fasciata, is part of a larger group of birds that has perplexed ornithologists for some time. In recent years it's been bounced between five different closely related families depending on which ornithologist is writing about them. Until recently the AOU Checklist put the wrentit in the family Timaliidae, commonly known as Old World babblers, a huge group of small songbirds similar to warblers and thrushes. Most Old world babblers are native to Eurasia, Africa, and Australasia, with an especially diverse number of species in the Indian subcontinent.
...What does all this mean? There hasn't been any change in the wrentit, but as a result of a taxonomical technicality it now enjoys the protection of a law that is, when USFWS decides to enforce it, a fairly stringent environmental protection law. Once the ruling becomes effective on December 1, big development projects that threaten to disrupt California's chaparral habitat have one more wildlife species to consider, and one more set of permits to get before they can start cutting down coyote brush.
Not a bad result from a group of scientists considering what might seem forbiddingly wonky data."
Chris Clarke
kcet.org
Tags: Sycamore Canyon Birds of Ventura County southern california birds Bird watching Lightroom lind Wesen Vogel Chamaea fasciata pekabo90401 100-400 80D canon 80 D Canon Camaraderie chim Friendship Fugl Cama brune Camea Pleistocene bird protected bird Non-migratory bird oiseau ibon
© All Rights Reserved
We were hiking in the local mountains when we heard the familiar "bouncing ball" call.
Wrentit!
From what I've read their closest relative might be the Parrotbill. A pretty cool little group. But hardly tidy. Some have cute dainty faces and some look like they were standing behind the door when looks were passed out. And how did they get here? With the Asians that crossed the Bering Strait in the Pleistocene Period? These Early Americans could walk in. But what if you could fly?
Why leave their previous home and move to LA? Well it wasn't LA back then and who knows what was happening at home. But let's say they had a good reason to find new territory. "It diverged from it's ancestors between 6.5 and 8.1 million years ago."http://creagrus.home.montereybay.com/parrotbills.html
So their ancestors braved the challenges of weather and geography. Left home and boldly went without a built in star migration map. Where was the shelter? Where was a reliable source of water and food?
Our strictly local dino descendants. Spooky eye. Comb-over belly feathers. Long legs and tail.
Tags: Chamaea fasciata Cama brune Camea wrentit fossils Pleistocene bird pekabo90401 camaraderie friendship birds of southern california lightroom 80-D 100-400 canon canon 80-D mountain monkey chilao san gabriel mountains angeles crest 鳥 鸟 fugl lind oiseau ibon πουλί 새 avem manu پرنده птица chim นก Bird watching Bird watching Los Angeles singing bird Non-migratory bird
© All Rights Reserved
Pairs mate for life, and may be together for more than 12 years. Both sexes incubate and sing to defend the territory.
Tags: wrentit Bird watching Birdwatching Los Angeles southern california birds pacific palisades birds pekabo90401
© All Rights Reserved