7 replies to this topic

[rkitt]

All the blue jays I'm feeding have decided to lose their head feathers (and keep the rest.) They look ridiculously cute... or perhaps cutely ridiculous?

[JimBob]

Actually that's Mites. . .

[rkitt]

Is it? Yeesh. Both the jays where I work and the ones at the house are baldies, and they're not even in the same town. o.O

[rkitt]

Jays do tend to lose their head feathers all at once when molting, though, so I'm inclined to lean towards that. Mites would be much less cute and considerably more of a bummer!

[JimBob]

It might be, still thinking it's mites.

[rkitt]

Was... was that a PUN? I am scandalized.

[cwj2323]

Mites are an incredible bummer. With the bird mite issue we had when the Barn Swallows nested on our front porch, I can very much sympathize with the birds. They've got to be feeling miserable.

I don't know, but with the suffering birds we had, they were scratching, bathing, anting a whole lot and had an overall wretched look about them. If a bird is not showing those behaviours, might it be a molt rather than mites? Hoping... maybe?

[lonestranger]

Here's a brown-headed cowbird molting into adult plumage. I have to admit, I had never seen a cowbird in this stage of molt before and it took me a while to figure out what it actually was.