{"id":25532,"date":"2019-01-13T10:26:35","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T18:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=25532"},"modified":"2019-01-16T02:44:28","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T10:44:28","slug":"finch-harvesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=25532","title":{"rendered":"Finch harvesting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Finches crave salt. To satisfy this, mixed flocks of hundreds of them will alight on salted winter roads and feast. There is, of course, a problem with this: traffic. Indeed, some truckers refer to them as <em>grill birds<\/em>, owing to their propensity to be collected by the grills of passing vehicles.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that highway traffic is not the only thing that collects finch carcasses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This is a view into the midst of perhaps a hundred finches on the highway. Both Pine Siskins, and Cassin&#8217;s Finches are seen here as they land, feed, and take off.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-25534\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/finches190112as.jpg?\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The problem, of course, is traffic. The birds try to lift off. While many escape, only to return, not all make it. There is a corpse in the lower left.\u00a0<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-25533\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/finches190112bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As the finches feed, ravens assemble and watch for roadkill. When it is spotted, they sweep down and carry off the corpses. This raven has a male Cassin&#8217;s Finch.\u00a0<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-25536\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/raven191012bs2.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This one is packing a female Cassin&#8217;s Finch. As the raven flew off, it collided with a male Cassin&#8217;s Finch trying to escape the mayhem. (I interviewed one of the ravens about this. It prevaricated: &#8220;We have a contract with Highways to keep the roads clear of bird carcasses &#8212; yum yum.&#8221;) <br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-25535\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/raven191012as2.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"720\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Finches crave salt. To satisfy this, mixed flocks of hundreds of them will alight on salted winter roads and feast. There is, of course, a problem with this: traffic. Indeed, some truckers refer to them as grill birds, owing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=25532\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25532"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25575,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25532\/revisions\/25575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}