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Project Noah Nature School
Auriparus flaviceps
Very small songbird with gray upperparts and pale gray underparts. Face and throat are dull yellow. Wings are gray with red-brown shoulder patches. Black bill, legs and feet. It builds complex sphere-shaped nests using as many as two thousands small twigs.
Tohono Chul Park is a 49-acre nature preserve in Casas Adobes, a suburb of Tucson, Arizona, United States.
Tiny and rather plain, the Verdin seems quite unremarkable at first sight. But it is among the most characteristic birds of the desert, and it has one notable distinction: it is not closely related to any other bird in the western hemisphere. For a while it was placed, uneasily, in the same family as the chickadees, which it resembles in size and in hyperactive behavior. Scientists now believe that its closest relatives are several species of small, plain birds found in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Spotted on Nov 6, 2013
Submitted on Dec 13, 2013
2 Comments
You are welcome. I have to admit, I was also unfamiliar with them until last year. I got a brief glimpse of one during a visit to Arizona. They flit around like chickadees, and are about the same size. This year, on another visit, I was lucky enough to spot them several times and have them stay in one place long enough to get a few decent photos.
Interesting information and spotting; I'd never heard of this bird before. Thanks for sharing this!