Great Scientific Discovery!

Western Tanager Watching Female Bullock's Oriole

In our times, it is not often that a lay person gets to add to the total sum of scientific knowledge. Once a “Renaissance” man might hope to do so, but those days are gone; now science advances mainly through the hard, painstaking work of real scientists, published in peer-reviewed journals. This is as true of ornithology as of any other science, although lay people do still help out with Christmas bird counts, ecological vacations, and simple observations.

So it is an exciting day when we here at the Fat Finch make a scientific discovery.

Western Tanager at the Grape Jelly

Normally, of course, we would follow the scientific method and submit our discovery to a peer-reviewed journal.  But, we’d rather share it first with you, our faithful readers. And, because we have photographic evidence to prove our discovery, we see no reason to wait to announce our discovery to the world. Here is a photo of a Western Tanager eating grape jelly. Taken yesterday, it shows a Western Tanager dipping into some grape jelly. We’ve seen both the male and the female eating the grape jelly.  (That is a White-winged Dove observing. As we’ve noted before, White-winged Doves spend their days trying to evolve. I suppose that is another of our discoveries. I don’t recall ever reading anything in a peer-reviewed journal demonstrating that some species actually attempt conscious evolution, but White-winged Doves do. This one is attempting to learn how to eat grape jelly.)

So here is our Scientific Discovery:

Orange birds love purple food.

We await the call from the Nobel Committee.

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Tags: bird feeding, Bullock's Oriole, Grape Jelly, Western Tanager