Birds & Birding

mrsmig

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mrsmig, I was thinking about doing a Better-Than-Usual (rather than a Big) Year in 2016, because I just don't notice enough.

Actually, that's a great idea. I feel like I could see a lot more if I made the time to bird during peak migration. There's a great birding site about half an hour from me that I've visited exactly once, and I need to go back there once the autumn migration gets going. Unfortunately that's about the same time my next gig starts, so I will have to carve out the time.

Incidentally, while I was grilling on the deck late yesterday afternoon I had a big uptick in bird activity. A lot of what I was seeing were juvenile birds and consequently it was sometimes hard to ID them, but I THINK this winsome youngster is a female Brown-Headed Cowbird:

juvenilecowbirdresized.jpg


I also put up a hummingbird feeder for the first time this year, afraid that I wouldn't attract any so late in the season, but I needn't have worried:

hummingbird_1.jpg
 
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Captcha

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I put out feed in the winter and enjoy the antics, but I don't really keep track of different species (I tried, once, but got boggled by all the little sparrow-like guys - oh, that's a subspecies of sparrow, but that's a female goldfinch, and that's a... I don't know. They're just cute little birds who like seeds.)

The only species I really keep close track of is the wild turkeys, because they're pretty hard to miss. I live on top of a nearly-a-cliff hill, and in the winter the turkeys will fly in to the grassland at the bottom of the hill, then send a sentry up to scout out the yards (my neighbour also feeds birds) and if the coast is clear, the whole flock will come up, one at a time. We call it the March of the Turkeys.

Everyone says they're a really hard bird to hunt, but... I'm really not sure why...
 
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mrsmig

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I put out feed in the winter and enjoy the antics, but I don't really keep track of different species (I tried, once, but got boggled by all the little sparrow-like guys - oh, that's a subspecies of sparrow, but that's a female goldfinch, and that's a... I don't know. They're just cute little birds who like seeds.)

<<snip>>

ETA: I have no idea how to tell how big an image is (other than just looking at it?) and no idea how to resize it anyway, so - if this one is too big, let me know and I'll delete.

That's an amazing photo, Captcha!

Sparrow IDing is such a finicky business. My brother birds and when he's stumped by one, he just calls it an LBJ ("Little Brown Job").

If you right-click on your photo, a pop-up window will let you view your image's properties, including its dimensions. I'm glad you mentioned it because I didn't realize how large mine were. I post photos on AW through photobucket.com, which lets you resize and gives you direct links to your pictures, but lately when I resize, it gives me the link for the original photo. Apparently it's some issue with my anti-virus program. :tongue
 
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Twick

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I had a life list, once. It was all in my Peterson's. Left it on a fence post somewhere.

(May I say with a modest touch of pride that I took the picture that is my avatar? Yeah, it's not a bird. I was bird-watching when I found him!)
 
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mrsmig

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I had a life list, once. It was all in my Peterson's. Left it on a fence post somewhere.

(May I say with a modest touch of pride that I took the picture that is my avatar? Yeah, it's not a bird. I was bird-watching when I found him!)

Sorry for your loss, Twick. :tongue

Your avatar photo is awesome. Do you mind telling where and how you took it?
 

Twick

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He was making his way along the Toronto waterfront around 8 am, just as I was trying out my new Canon SX60. The superzoom on it works nicely.
 

shakeysix

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Cheyenne Bottoms is a wildlife refuge just a few miles from here. My family ground is near a creek that empties into the bottoms. From time to time we have Whooping Cranes migrate through. Not as big as deal as in "Only Cowgirls Get the Blues" but still, it makes the news. Closer yet, is another refuge-a salt marsh called Quivira. One of the reasons I moved back to my home county is to be nearer Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira.

The best bird I spotted there was a Golden Eagle. It flew up from a ditch right in front of my car. The wingspan was huge, wider than my windshield. Herons, egrets, and lots of pelicans--a bird you don't expect in Kansas-- ducks, snow geese, all kinds of migratory birds stop here to feed on the salt marshes. Google the refuges and look at the pictures.

The swallows are still here for a while yet. When I drive out to walk the creek, the swallows come zooming out from under the culverts and bridges. We have had a lot of rain this summer, the pastures and fields are full of a wildflower called Snow on the Mountain and one called Butter and Eggs. No trees to get in the way, so the flowers seem to melt into the sky. The prettiest is one called Prairie Tickseed that grows in long ribbons--they look like a river of tiny yellow stars running through the other flowers. The birds feed on the seeds. And of course the roads are bordered with sunflowers--another bird cafeteria. The birds drop the seeds and if we have a wet year, there are flowers, too.--s6
 
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PastyAlien

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The coolest bird I ever saw was a ghost magpie, which is a magpie with a form of incomplete albinism. I spotted it last year across the street from my house. Didn't get a picture because I don't have a camera with a telephoto lens, but I watched it for a good fifteen minutes through my binoculars.
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

CBC radio had a documentary on this a week or so ago. Fascinating, especially the part about the funerals. Magpies have 'em too; I witnessed a magpie funeral once. I was writing upstairs when an incessant raucous squawking compelled me to look out the window. There was a dead magpie in the street; must have been hit by a car, poor thing. About a dozen magpies surrounded it--in the street, in trees, on lawns, and squawking bloody murder. One magpie approached the dead one and I thought, oh, dear; it's going to eat it. But instead it tugged gently on a feather, almost kind of running the feather through its beak. Another one did the same thing. After about fifteen minutes of squawking, the magpies all flew off.
 

Brightdreamer

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Grr... playing camera tag with a tanager in the yard today. It sits right outside the window on a trellis gulping berries. But if I so much as think the word "camera," off it flies... and if I sat out there, I doubt it would come back.

How do they know, dang it? How do they always know?
 

Helix

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Birds do that all the time, Brightdreamer. It just happened to me, when I went to get the camera to photograph a small flock of chestnut-breasted mannikins. Not rare, but a lifer for me. I think that takes my 2015 backyard bird list up to 125 species. (Not all in the same backyard.)
 

shakeysix

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We have western tanagers here but only as migrators. They are shy, stay mainly in the shelter belts because of the pine trees but they are so wildly colored you can't miss them. My grandmother's dining room had scarlet tanager wallpaper. It was the first bird after robins and blue jays that I could identify. I have only seen maybe eight in my lifetime. Envy anyone who sees them regularly. --s6
 

Brightdreamer

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We have western tanagers here but only as migrators. They are shy, stay mainly in the shelter belts because of the pine trees but they are so wildly colored you can't miss them. My grandmother's dining room had scarlet tanager wallpaper. It was the first bird after robins and blue jays that I could identify. I have only seen maybe eight in my lifetime. Envy anyone who sees them regularly. --s6

We get westerns through about once a year. Usually, it's only a few at a time - a male and a female, maybe a juvenile. A few years back, though, I saw a whole flock making their way through cherry trees. They're about the brightest non-hummer birds we see. (Though Wilson's warblers are also known to swing by annually... they're pretty bright. And Steller's jays can be rather pretty when the sun hits them right to show off the blue.)

Ages ago, I was in DC and I think I saw a summer tanager. (I can't be sure - it was red, about tanager sized, and it flew across the path in front of me too fast for a real ID.)
 

shakeysix

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I took a walk through a part of Quivira this evening. Egrets and cranes, red winged blackbirds but a baby snake was the main attraction. It was about the size of a pencil, shiny brown on tan. I snapped several pix but not sure any were worth saving. I'll download tomorrow. Tired tonight. My daughter ran a mile on the trail, after teaching school all day. I am tuckered out after a half mile of walking, picture snapping and a strenuous Windows Ten install--s6
 
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Marlys

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Ages ago, I was in DC and I think I saw a summer tanager. (I can't be sure - it was red, about tanager sized, and it flew across the path in front of me too fast for a real ID.)
I'm pretty sure I saw a summer tanager in Richmond, VA in June. I've seen scarlet tanagers occasionally here in Indiana, but had never seen a summer one before--I was able to look at it long enough to be sure it didn't have black wings, but was completely red. Just beautiful. Sadly, no camera--we were out running.
 

mrsmig

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For those of you who keep lists, do you use an online site to track your sightings? I've been using eBird.org for some years now and have been generally happy with it. It's a service of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon, as well as some other affiliates. The site has lots of useful information - right now I'm following their migration forecasts (according to eBird, the fall migration has already begun in my area) and have participated in their Project Feederwatch program in the past.
 
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Helix

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I didn't know about eBird, but I'll give a go. I just record them in my field notebooks, uploading the rare/unusual sightings to Atlas of Living Australia.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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I put out feed in the winter and enjoy the antics, but I don't really keep track of different species (I tried, once, but got boggled by all the little sparrow-like guys - oh, that's a subspecies of sparrow, but that's a female goldfinch, and that's a... I don't know. They're just cute little birds who like seeds.)

The only species I really keep close track of is the wild turkeys, because they're pretty hard to miss. I live on top of a nearly-a-cliff hill, and in the winter the turkeys will fly in to the grassland at the bottom of the hill, then send a sentry up to scout out the yards (my neighbour also feeds birds) and if the coast is clear, the whole flock will come up, one at a time. We call it the March of the Turkeys.

Everyone says they're a really hard bird to hunt, but... I'm really not sure why...

turkeys_zpsrazd2mkg.jpg


ETA: I have no idea how to tell how big an image is (other than just looking at it?) and no idea how to resize it anyway, so - if this one is too big, let me know and I'll delete.

It's a great photo. It's 640 by 480 pixels. Maybe you could trim it down a little?
 

shakeysix

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I have been a little down this week but then I called my godmother, my 85 year old aunt in Houston. She is a bird lover but a little loopy--not getting a little loopy but always has been a little loopy. She has a heart of gold and cannot bear to hurt anything. She was in her backyard when I called, guarding her bird feeders against the squirrels that tip them and then rob the birdseed. So Aunt Marie sits outside on her sun porch and throws pea nuts to the squirrels to distract them from the bird feeders! Needless to say, talking to her always makes me feel better about the human race.--s6
 

MaryMumsy

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I buy peanuts (in the shell) for the squirrels at our place in the mountains. But the damned blue jays steal them!

On an unrelated note, night before last we had a *big* raccoon strolling around the cool deck of the pool, after getting a drink.

MM