Hi, Tweets. Some thoughts on various items of discussion the past few
months:

1. Re. the apparent different head shape among some Common Loons and the
possibility of this being sexually specific -

I have had ample opporunity to suss this out with several Common Loons over
the holiday period down at the BC south coast and have come to the
conclusion that it is strictly a function of feather extension and
apparently not something related to underlying bone structure (as surmised
by Dennis Paulsen in his answer to this thread). I have seen both immature
and adult Common Loons do this over the past few days and the "bumpiness" of
the head could be seen to change as the feathers at the front and rear of
the crown were erected, sometimes in tandem and others separately. Note that
this does not rule out a sexually-specific ability. Perhaps this trend to
feather lifting is only done by males?

2. The importance of satellite-tracking of birds has been underlined in
the recent discovery re. Californian Swainson's Hawks. Not only does this
shed light on distribution, but also on the plasticity of migrational
patterns. Perhaps they are not as hard-coded as we would like to think. Does
this mean that the small population of central and northeast BC Broad-winge
Hawks will one day develop a shorter migration path than their more eastern
siblings? Have they done so already?

3. For those that have not yet seen the Xantus' Hummingbird at Gibson's
Landing, BC, it is still there. There has been some discussion re. the sex
of this bird. Clem Ticzck from Phoenix was there yesterday with me and he
has some experience with this bird from Baja. We agreed it is showing some
obvious female characteristics such as buffy ventral wash, green deck
feathers on the tail, and black tipping to the ends of the outer tail
feathers. Note that nobody there knew if a young male Xantus' shows some of
these points. I would favor it being a female rather than a male, though. By
the way, the bird appears quite healthy with fresh feathers. Apparently it
was very bedraggled when it first showed up. I guess you would, too, if you
got bonked on the head by a hurricane-driven object enough to send you 2000
miles off course.

cheers,
Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC (usually)

P.S. Michael Price - will be phoning you shortly. Still looking for that
tank of a Van. Harbor eider!