Birds & Birding

mrsmig

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Thought I'd start this thread for any AWers who also bird.

I just got back from a two-month stint out of state. My bird feeding stations have been neglected all that time, as my husband doesn't have that much interest in birds (he did, however, keep my birdbath and fountain cleaned and filled the whole time I was away). I was afraid it would take a while for the birds to rediscover the feeders, but I needn't have worried. The whole time I was filling them, a chickadee and then a nuthatch and then a cardinal perched overhead, yelling like crazy (to me it sounded like birdspeak for "Where the heck have you been? Hurry it up!"). Consequently the yard has been a madhouse ever since

Yesterday morning I was headed out the kitchen door to a dental appointment and startled a large hawk on the ground right by one of the stations. It took off before I could ID it, but it clearly had just made a dive at something feeding. I don't think it was successful; I didn't see any blood or feathers in the grass, and it didn't seem to be carrying anything when it took off, but it was a reminder to me that when I put out a smorgasbord for the songbirds, I'm also creating a buffet for predators. Not that I mind; it's the whole circle of life thing, but I always hope they home in on invasive species like English Sparrows or European Starlings, of which I have a surfeit.

Anyone else in the AW community like birding?
 

Brightdreamer

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I'm something of an armchair birder - I don't haul myself out to specifically look for them and I don't keep a "life book" or anything of sightings, but I keep an eye on the branches when I go outside.

We used to feed, but had to stop due to vermin issues and bears. And band-tailed pigeons. I have an old bird book that describes them as "shy" and "just starting to come to feeders." Ha! We had maybe two dozen of the pigs at once. And they still keep an eye on the yard, in case we start feeding again. I'd like to get a fountain going somewhere, but there's always a Reason it can't happen. Dang it.
 

Marlys

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Yeah, I started up the birdfeeder again this year after a few years of neglect. My regulars also include chickadees, nuthatches, and cardinals, plus downy woodpeckers, tufted titmice (titmouses?), catbirds, goldfinches, either house or purple finches (can't yet tell the difference), and a variety of sparrows--but I lost most of the sparrows when I switched from a long rectangular feeder, which they loved, to a house-shaped one, which they obviously don't love. I only get starlings and grackles every once in a while, but when I do, a whole ginormous flock attacks the feeder and just about empties it. Then they go away for several weeks.

Occasionals: blue jays, red-bellied woodpeckers, northern flickers (more likely to eat things from the ground than the feeder, but do hit the suet sometimes), mourning doves.

Oh, and squirrels...I'm managing to keep the big fat fox squirrels off the feeder with a glass-bottle baffle, but the little red squirrels ignore it. But they're cute and don't eat much (and there aren't many of them in Indiana--the ones in my back yard are new, and before them I'd only ever seen a red squirrel in town once in 16 years).
 

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I'm also a bit of a casual birder, but had a rather traumatic experience once. We get huge flocks of Bohemian waxwings in our apple tree, and the last time there were about a hundred waxwings happily gorging themselves on the apples. Then a kestrel came screaming in at about Mach II and snatched one. The poor little waxwing was trilling pathetically as it was carried off. I still hear it. Nature, she is cruel. :(
 

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I'm also a bit of a casual birder, but had a rather traumatic experience once. We get huge flocks of Bohemian waxwings in our apple tree, and the last time there were about a hundred waxwings happily gorging themselves on the apples. Then a kestrel came screaming in at about Mach II and snatched one. The poor little waxwing was trilling pathetically as it was carried off. I still hear it. Nature, she is cruel. :(
:( :( :(

I don't bird, but I like animals. I'm starting to develop a real liking to crows. They're so smart.

One time I was in my car parked in a parking space in front of some bushes. And there were these two birds there. One was chirping away, moving its head a lot. The other one was silent and didn't move much. It reminded me of a married couple. Haha.
 

PastyAlien

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:( :( :(

I don't bird, but I like animals. I'm starting to develop a real liking to crows. They're so smart.

One time I was in my car parked in a parking space in front of some bushes. And there were these two birds there. One was chirping away, moving its head a lot. The other one was silent and didn't move much. It reminded me of a married couple. Haha.
Heee! I love crows, too. And magpies, bluejays, and whiskey jacks--all corvids, really. They're freaking geniuses.
 

ElaineA

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I don't provide food for any birds but hummingbirds (because they sit in my tree all winter with snow on their backs and I feel bad) but my crazy garden means it's like the Audubon society around here. We have 2 kinds of hummingbirds, the regular old urban birds (chickadees, sparrows of all kinds, wrens, juncos, flickers, robins, towees, blue jays, crows) as well as kinglets, goldfinches and warblers. I've also ID'd tanagers and grosbeak. In the last couple of weeks we have had a pileated woodpecker stopping by, which has been so cool. They're big when they fly in. I am endlessly amused by birds' antics--until the reckless hummingbirds threaten to impale me. One of these days I'm going to have one stuck in my skull! :D

The crows...oy. We have nests in the nearby fir and cedar trees every year so they make life here loud when the nestlings hatch. I'd been living peacefully with them for years...they seem to enjoy teasing my dogs, flying tree to tree swooping in an arc over my yard to get the Jack Russell up on his back feet hopping after them. They do it over and over and over and I know they're playing.

But this year one of the babies fell from the nest next door and unfortunately made its way to our yard where the JRT found it first. I rescued the baby before the dog got a solid hold on it, but it couldn't fly. The parents took very protective care of it for 10 days, which meant neither me nor the dog could go into the yard without getting yelled at and swooped at. Plus I had to keep the dogs away from the half of the yard where the baby was hidden. Not a problem, but the crows insisted on chasing me, even once around to the front of the house and under my front porch. Felt a bit too much like The Birds for my taste.

If you haven't seen the study done here by a couple of profs from the University of Washington about crows learning faces, here's a capsule of it: http://www.nwf.org/news-and-magazin...ds/archives/2013/crows-recognizing-faces.aspx

My husband could go outside without a problem, as could the dog that didn't get near the baby. And my neighbor's Westie (also a white terrier) could ramble around their yard without difficulty. So there was no question the crows reserved their ire for me (who neared the baby) and the JRT. It was both fascinating and annoying. I finally had to send my son dressed in disguise to retrieve the chick when it never started flying, so I could take it to the wildlife rescue.

Then on Tuesday we had the plumber out when our bathroom sink and shower drains were all backing up. He found a dead bird in our sewer line...right under the roof vent for the toilets. He said, "sometimes we find rib bones and chicken bones where crows will drop things down the vents, but I've never once encountered a whole bird!"

Vendetta?? Who knows...I wouldn't put it past 'em.
 

MaryMumsy

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We have an assortment in our yard here in central AZ. Gambel's Quail, two or three types of hummingbirds, grackels, two kinds of hawks, the occassional great horned owl, some little birds that are sparrow like, and I'm sure others as well. We don't feed, but have a lot of assorted vegetation and all seem to find something they like. The hawks and the owl like our rabbits :cry:.

MM
 

Polenth

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I have a bird table. The little birds do visit (cautiously, as there are a lot of cats in the area) but the most noticeable are wood pigeons and magpies. The magpies knock on the window and complain if the food isn't to their liking or has run out.
 

shakeysix

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I have not put out the feeders yet. Usually wait till it is cold and there are no more grasshoppers for the birds to snack on. In past years I had a peach and an apricot tree and had to protect the fruit. There are orioles here in Kansas. They usually stay in the shelter belts but somehow they knew when my peaches and apricots were ready. Lost the peach tree this year in a late double whammy frost. The apricot survived but without bearing so no orioles. Not sure if i am happy or sad not to have them. They are pretty if pesky. I saw a red headed woodpecker this morning from my bedroom window. At first I thought it was something exotic because it was on the grass but no, just old Woody come to say good morning--s6
 

Albedo

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Rainbow lorikeets and sulfur-crested cockatoos regularly come to my balcony demanding tribute. The cockatoos can demolish one of those brick sized seed blocks in ten minutes.
 

rugcat

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I was a birder when I was young. I don't do it anymore, but I still occasionally can impress people by identifying an unseen bird in the underbrush by song.

From about age 12, I spent summers in a cabin in a small canyon in the mountains of Utah. My dad was a birder – we even discovered a subspecies of rock wren that no one knew anything about.

We had a list on the wall of our cabin – like a life list but it was just a canyon list. Over the years it grew to well over more 100 species, in a very small geographic area. These days, when I go back there, I am struck every time with the loss of diversity in the area. We identified 15–20 different species of warblers when I was young – I don't think I've seen a single warbler there in the last few years. This is pretty much true everywhere – birds that used to be if not common, at least prevalent, are now exceedingly rare.

However, the year round residents, the ones that adapt well to civilization are going strong – Mountain chickadees, Stellers Jays, and the tough and clever Clarks Nutcracker. Occasionally you'll come across a Franklins Grouse (local name pine hens) while hiking– they'll almost give you a heart attack, because they sit there quietly, well camouflaged, until you're a few feet from them and then explode right under your feet with a drumming roar.

At one time there were so many of them that in the early part of the 20th century, when the miners worked the canyon, they called them fool hens because they were so unafraid of people you could kill one with a rock. Which they did, until there weren't a whole lot of them left. The survivors, through the wonders of evolution, are a whole lot more wary.
 

Helix

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I just did a circuit of the garden: figbirds, black-faced cuckooshrikes, white-bellied cuckooshrikes, brown honeyeaters, dusky honeyeaters, Lewin's honeyeaters, olive-backed sunbirds, varied trillers, fan-tailed cuckoos, helmeted friarbirds. In the paddocks, cattle egrets and black kites. And I can hear (but not see) magpie geese.

No supplementary feeding here, because there are plenty of nectar plants, but several bird baths. In the dry season (now), the shallow water brings 'em in. Even the Lewin's honeyeaters, which really prefer deeper water. I know this because I once caught one taking a plunge bath in the toilet bowl. (The bird was taking the bath, not me.)

ETA: And kookaburras.
 
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ElaineA

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I don't know what most of those are, but I'm wildly jealous. There's a distinct food theme in bird naming in Oz...figs, honey and olives...it's a Mediterranean diet of birds!

I have some serious googling ahead of me...


ETA: just googled. Even more jealous now. I want to see an olive-backed sunbird in my yard!
 
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Albedo

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A lot of early ornnithologists went hungry.

It's too late, Helix. The cockys have already stolen a queen-sized mattress protector off my balcony. Like, totally gone.
 

Helix

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I don't know what most of those are, but I'm wildly jealous. There's a distinct food theme in bird naming in Oz...figs, honey and olives...it's a Mediterranean diet of birds!

I have some serious googling ahead of me...


ETA: just googled. Even more jealous now. I want to see an olive-backed sunbird in my yard!

I didn't think of that, but it sounds delish, doesn't it?

Sunbirds often build their nests in sheds and on verandas, usually in the most awkward spots. The nests are darling little things -- they're made of spider webs and dangle from a thread.

I can now add little shrike-thrush and silvereye to the morning list. (I won't keep updating.)
 

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I don't provide food for any birds but hummingbirds (because they sit in my tree all winter with snow on their backs and I feel bad...

We have hummer feeders; thus far, the bears don't bother with them, so we can keep them out. At one point this year, they were draining four feeders in the space of a day. It's been decades since they've been that busy... and back then it was just rufous hummers*. We didn't start seeing the Anna's until a few years ago; now they're overwintering and hanging out year-round. (Makes me a bit worried about the rufous population...)

(*- Well, they look like rufous. They could actually be Allen's. Most of the dive patterns I see, according to the lists, are Allen's. Apparently, the only definite physical difference is in the tail feathers... TBH, I think that if they ever do a DNA breakdown they'll turn out to be the same danged bird with different accents.)
 

Helix

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I love hearing about the birds (and bears!) in AWers gardens. Keep the reports coming!

Albedo, they just wanted to make sure you understood the consequences. *taps beak*
 
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mrsmig

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I'm so happy there are other bird people on AW! I wouldn't call myself a serious birder (not on the scale of The Big Year, I mean), but I do keep a Life List, subscribe to a couple of bird sighting alerts and when time allows, take binoculars and camera and go walking to see what I can see. Mostly I just look out my back door at my feeding stations, and when I attract a new species to the yard I get very excited. In early summer I got this one:

pileated.jpg


It's a Pileated Woodpecker, one of the largest and showiest of the woodpecker clan. I've heard them in the neighborhood in the past, and seen them elsewhere, but this was the first time one visited my yard. Because my feeders had been empty for two months I was afraid that June visit would be my one and only sighting, but it showed up again the first week I was back. Success!
 
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Marlys

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Nice! We get pileated woodpeckers on our biggest tree sometimes, but they don't show any interest in the feeder. I often see them in the park I run in--I saw five in one day last spring (three were together--probably a family).

I have a weakness for woodpeckers--the downy family that visits our feeder is adorable. They love the suet cakes. At first, the juveniles would perch on top of the feeder and wait for the adults to feed them. Then one got bold and started pecking tentatively at the suet himself, but not actually eating it. He did that for days before he swallowed some. Just practice, I guess, or having to connect the impulse to peck to the impulse to feed. Now he will hang out on the feeder by the suet cake whether he's eating or not. I think he bonded to it.