Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Fatty Fox Sparrow

Tuesday, September 3rd

One of the morphometrics we collected from every bird is the amount of fat accumulated in the furcula (analogous to our collar bone); migrating songbirds accumulate large stores of fat to help fuel their long journey. Because they accumulate fat subcutaneously and their skin is "clear" we can easily make a qualitative assessment (scale of 0 to 7) of how much fat a bird has. This Fox Sparrow had a fat score of 5!




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