I normally wouldn’t post so soon after a recent post, but I had a bit of a shock today - and a bit of a revelation, in that an observant naturalist is ever-gratified by the little dramas of suburbia. It seems, a few feet from our front door, the melting snow revealed a dead bird of the grouse family (I can’t ID it even after several strenuous minutes with ‘Birds of Alberta’ - it looks like a gray partridge, but what’s a gray partridge doing in Regency Heights?). Except it didn’t, in fact, die last winter and it wasn’t revealed by the snow. Close examination suggested it had died about ten minutes before I walked up the steps. The body cavity was a pool of nail-polish-hued blood, vampy scarlet, not a hint of oxidized brown in the sad bowl of its chest or in the spots of blood haloing it. So there is something in this neighbourhood that kills birds and leaves them in the front yard.
Suspects:
1. Housecat
2. Merlin or peregrine falcon (which we see regularly around the place)
3. Coyote (ditto)
4. Dingo
OK, I just got confirmation from a former wildlife college student that it is, in fact, most likely a gray partridge. Which makes it even weirder to be in the suburbs. A ruffed grouse would have been more likely given its range and habitat, but the size and colouring are slightly wrong.
I love the deductive process.