Little news from Dennis ... he was able to get a look at the HSC bird this morning as he passed through the area and it has a pink anodized band on one leg - that means its from the US Midwest. He couldn't get a look at the other leg for the coloured band so we have no idea who it is. Dennis is also of the mind that it could be a female.
We are pretty confident however that it isn't Sandy or Princess as this bird's breast is much whiter than hers. At the moment the bird's breast has a rusty wash on it (they get it during/after the breeding season) so it maybe doesn't look quite as white as we make it sound but basically we mean that the white part of the breast (wash or no) goes lower than on other birds. Sandy and Princess have barring and speckles that come up to what would look like the collarbone area on a human. Trey's barring was pale spots on his belly and white down to his belly (on a human, white to his navel).
So two mysteries:
1. Is the HSC bird the same bird Pam photographed yesterday? at a distance and with the light shining on its breast, the wash would not be visible so all we can say is that the bird has more white on its breast than Sandy or Princess or even Jules.
2. Who is this American bird? We did have an American male come visit Sandy at the Radisson nestbox last autumn after Ivy and Princess had left. If it's a male, it could be him. We have never had a non-Manitoba male nest in the province - non-Manitoba females yes, but not males. If it's a female, it looks to be a new bird ... mayhaps a relation of Kate's or Sandy's? Maybe someone from Grand Forks - a kid of Terminator's from Brandon? Or someone from even further afield?
And yes, Dennis did take a photo, but without that coloured band, we are still stuck with solving the mysteries
