Saturday 5 March 2011

Orlando, Florida

I have been on a trip with my family to visit Orlando. It came about as a Harry Potter obssessed son needed some encouragement to work hard at school. So we went to a theme park and stood in queues all day. I managed to get away for an afternoon to "Gatorland" and enjoyed the egrets in their breeding plumage. That post has been sent to the brotherhood at 10000 Birds under the title "Getting out of line" and includes a little teaser about the winged creatures that inhabit Universal's "Islands of Adventure."
Many's the time that I have bemoaned the lack of a decent field guide and I must now include the Wizarding World of Harry Potter among the pteralogically overlooked tracts.
While JK Rowling has given descriptions of many of the wonderful creatures that inhabit the region, she has not made her guides user friendly. First of all, seven volumes is not an easy fit into a small field bag.
Secondly, she has made little or no attempt to describe juvenile or breeding appearances. If a picture paints a thousand words, Ms Rowling may have been able to reduce the size of her mighty work by including a few.
In short, I need suggestions to help me identify some of the winged  creatures that I saw. Some of them were seen beyond Harry Potter Land and thus have probably not been described by Rowling, so contributors may need to venture even further afield.
If you have any suggestions please leave them as a comment below.
If you have a latin binomial for your suggestions, even better. A suggestion was made for the creature below; Pseudanser seussii. Without a common name, it seems like a reasonable place to start. 


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