2017: For the Birds and Bird lovers CAUTION LARGE PHOTOS

AW Admin said:

Lots of American gold finches here; trying to get a good picture of a female, but so far, no luck. Here's a male:

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Lovely!

Nice pics, everyone!

That blog is incredible, Elaine.

I saw on the local paper last weekend that there's a nesting pair of eagles one town over. The article talked about the resurgence of the eagle, which was nice to read. I hope I see them in the area. I've had hawks in my yard--it's a nice open space with lots of small prey running around. I had three huge rabbits running in my yard all weekend doing their mating shenanigans.

We have a popular osprey nest on the way to the beach. It's right on the highway--they put up platforms for the ospreys to nest on (though one pair has built their nest on the back of the highway sign). They're sitting on eggs right now. Most of them are. This platform a guy put up on his property when he saw the couple in the area and then they built a nest:
http://ospreyzone.com/

My crow population has changed. I used to have typically 6-8 but as many as 10 that circled around and ate peanuts that I threw to them. I'm assuming this is a pairing-off and flock creation thing that happens in spring. Now, I have max 3. For a while only 1. My talkative crow has come back though (identifiable by a white ruff on his right leg). He sits on the light standard that's level with my 3rd floor balcony and makes noise at me... kinda between a croak and a meow. I'm convinced he's trying to repeat "peanut" back at me; it's the only word I say to them.

I've also had red-winged black birds show up lately.

Made a quick trip to Cooktown at the beginning of last week. Decided not to use my long lens and am now extremely annoyed with myself. Still, Cooktown is only about four hours' drive north, so I'll have to make another trip before the end of the year.

Saw a few lifers, which is always wonderful. Among them were lovely fairy-wrens. They certainly live up to their name, even with the high standards set by splendid and superb fairy-wrens. Here's one of the few not appalling bird photos I took: blue-winged kookaburra. Australia has two species of kookaburra -- the laughing or common kookaburra, which is widespread, and the blue-winged kookaburra, which is a mostly tropical species, although it does occur as far south as Brisbane. (New Guinea has another two species.)

Not a sighting, but I heard an itinerant owl the other night; we get them every so often, but they don't seem to hang around more than a few nights. Can't be certain, as the bird guide with the good description of calls is AWOL, but I believe it was a Great Horned Owl. The hoots had a "skip to my lou" pattern in the first part.

Perhaps not the prettiest of birds, and certainly her song is nothing to write home about, but this little lady has been hanging around with her drake for the last few days. Hoping that she is "with egg" and we will see some little 'uns soon...

I saw a Baltimore oriel the other day. They're not rare here in the summer, but still uncommon, so to me, it was pretty special.

Brightdreamer said:

Not a sighting, but I heard an itinerant owl the other night; we get them every so often, but they don't seem to hang around more than a few nights. Can't be certain, as the bird guide with the good description of calls is AWOL, but I believe it was a Great Horned Owl. The hoots had a "skip to my lou" pattern in the first part.

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All About Birds is an amazing online bird guide from Cornell University. It even includes has audio examples of bird calls.

Brightdreamer said:

Not a sighting, but I heard an itinerant owl the other night; we get them every so often, but they don't seem to hang around more than a few nights. Can't be certain, as the bird guide with the good description of calls is AWOL, but I believe it was a Great Horned Owl. The hoots had a "skip to my lou" pattern in the first part.

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I saw a barn owl taking off from a tree the other evening. Sometimes I hear them cry on summer nights when I've got my window open. Not the rarest of owls, but they're still very pretty to watch, and I appreciate the role they play in keeping our neighborhood's rat population down.

There are great horned owls in Sacramento, but I've never seen one. Friends with small dogs don't let their little pals out unprotected at night, because these huge owls have been known to take the occasional Chihuahua or Pomeranian.

A non-owl-related mystery was also solved the other day. I (and my dogs) have been finding the occasional whole peanut in the middle of my back lawn. I don't put peanuts out, and the squirrels never come down off the fence and onto the grass that I've ever seen, so I've been wondering where the peanuts are coming from. Then I caught a scrub jay poking a peanut down into the soft dirt I used to patch the rut my young dog has worn in my back lawn. The jays must be getting them at a neighbor's feeder and have decided that my pathetic attempts at lawn care create a good hiding place for their prizes.

I've watched the blue jays here do the same with acorns. I've also seen them watching squirrels as they stow goodies in the ground then swoop in and steal them once the squirrel leaves. Being related to crows, jays are rather smart.

I captured a couple of bird pictures while on a short hike this afternoon:



This is a wood thrush. Not the most stunning bird, but they're song is quite pretty. They're also pretty elusive, preferring to hang out in the treetops, but I just so happened to catch this one as it came down for drink at a nearby stream.




This is an Eastern Towhee. I've been trying for ages to snag a picture of one of these, and I finally got lucky today.

The blue jays are particularly active around here right now. In all this time I don't recall ever hearing the call I heard today as several of them bounced around in a tree in the backyard. Or if I'd heard it before, I didn't know what it was.

It's the first 15 or so seconds in this video: Blue Jay calls and sounds Part 2

The common call of a blue jay is a jeering jaay or jaay-jaay, which often attracts other jays. Intense versions are given in alarm. Calls accompanying the bobbing display include a musical, bell-like toolool, toolool, a squeaky wheedleee, wheedelee, and odd clicking sounds. When jays are in close proximity of one another soft nasal calls are given, especially during mating, feeding and nest building. Blue Jays frequently mimic hawk calls, especially those of the Red-shouldered Hawk. They are quite good at mimicking the sharp-shinned hawk call and have fooled me a few times.

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I missed the new photos! I have a towhee pair that come to my birdbath every day and I can NEVER take a picture. They're so skittish. Well done, LadyV! They're such funny birds the way they dash around and toss anything loose on the top of the soil (ie: leaves I was too lazy to rake) looking for yummies.

I, too, have seen the bluejays watch the squirrels and then go steal their prizes. I've also seen the bluejays then lose them to crows.

Things are very quiet (bird-wise) around my yard this year. I'm disappointed we didn't get any of the usual early pass-through visitors like grosbeaks and tanagers.

Please, Pacific Northwesterners... we've got Steller's jays, not blue jays. (Unless they're lost, which has been known to happen. We had a wayward bobwhite in our front yard ages ago for a few months... the poor thing would answer every time you whistled, trying to find friends.)

We've heard the grosbeaks, but since we don't feed anything but humms anymore I haven't seen them. And there have been tanager sightings, but not by me (dang it.)

The hummingbirds are in a bit of a lull; we were filling a huge feeder twice a day, in addition to others, and now we're down to once a day. Though I still got buzzed at when I had to top the backyard feeder.

I'm noticing a sad lack of butterflies, aside from the white ones. Probably from years of spraying for gypsy moths and other pests... Keep wanting to plant a butterfly garden, but it never seems to happen. (Besides, for milkweeds you have to start from seed if you don't want caterpillar/butterfly-harming pesticides on the plants - even the ones that say they aren't treated often are, so unless you grow your own you can't be sure.)

Brightdreamer said:

Please, Pacific Northwesterners... we've got Steller's jays, not blue jays.

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Urk. Stands corrected.

Brightdreamer said:

Please, Pacific Northwesterners... we've got Steller's jays, not blue jays. ...

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These don't have the same amount of white on them as actual blue jays and the range is what it is, so clearly these are stellar jays. I've always called them blue jays and I see some people call them mountain blue jays. I've never heard them called stellar jays.

So to be consistent, here is a stellar jay making the beak rattle sound.

In reading about the sound I found it's made by beak rattling. The owls do that, it's so cute but it isn't the same sound, more like clicks and less like a rattle.

AW Admin said:

I've only seen Stellar's Jays Elsewhere, not ever in our yard, at our feeders. Across the street, in the parking lot at the grocery store, but they never visit.

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Have you tried peanuts? They certainly drop enough of them in my yard.

AW Admin said:

I've only seen Stellar's Jays Elsewhere, not ever in our yard, at our feeders. Across the street, in the parking lot at the grocery store, but they never visit.

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Huh... we used to get them at our feeders fairly regularly. They even figured out how to eat at the feeder that dumped them. (One of those with the weighted perch; when something heavy lands on it, the perch swings down and closes the window to the food. The jays would hover-perch, so the perch fell slowly, allowing them to eat.)

Somewhere I have a photo I took of a jay feather with rainbows in it - when you hold them up to a bright point of light, little spectrums appear. (Probably part of the whole "blue" mechanism - I haven't seen many other feathers do that.)

AW Admin said:

The squirrels (damn their mangy hides) loved the peanuts.

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I just put a peanut feeder up in our front yard tree. I am hoping to attract more jays and magpies to my yard, but so far only one very intrepid squirrel has found it. Maybe the birds will notice the increased squirrel traffic and figure it means there are peanuts here now. They're darned smart and can probably put things together like that.

Sadly, we don't have Stellar jays in the central valley (I've seen them in Marin and other coastal areas of Northern CA), just scrub jays. We do have yellow-billed magpies, though, and they're fun to watch.

I ran our sprinklers early this morning, and one of my heuchera has cupped, ruffled leaves that capture the water. Two hummingbirds are using them for a bath. At the same time I've never seen them do anything like it before. I'm completely charmed! (Of course, I didn't get a picture of it, as is the way with the most charming stuff. At least now I know to look.)

That is really interesting, Elaine.

There were two herons hanging out on my street. One was perched in my neighbor's tree, the other on another neighbor's roof. It's the first time I've ever seen herons here. Besides a small creek a mile away, we have no major bodies of water nearby.