Surprisingly Small Birds and Soft Snakes
Saturday May 29, 2010 Today the big park near our house was having its first ever "Spring Bird Festival", so Steve and I went to see what we could see (which turned out to be quite a bit). The first booth we came to had volunteers from the University of Guelph's Wildlife Education & Environmental Programs (WEEP), who had brought along four birds of prey who are unreleasable to the wild. Steve was surprised that Einstein the Great Horned Owl was so big, but the volunteers said he is on the large side for his species. "Here's a theory of relativity: I'm relatively huge!" What I couldn't believe was that the kestrel they had was so small . Okay, so her missing tail feathers may have made her seem a little smaller than usual, but still... In birding guidebooks and such, the American Kestrel is often described as being similar in size to an American Robin. Now I don't know how often birds face off Sharks v. Jets-style, bu