2017: For the Birds and Bird lovers CAUTION LARGE PHOTOS

Should I relax the Image Rules for this Thread

  • Yes, with a warning about large images

    Votes: 5 100.0%
  • Yes, but in the way I will explain in a post

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No; standard AW image rules are fine

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    5
  • Poll closed .

ElaineA

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Let's see if this works...

Hummer in the nest

OMG, great pic! Look how camoflaged! This is so cool, and in a rhododendron, too!! I have a nest on my bookshelf that got blown off a tree...it wouldn't hold a golf ball, but they stick two growing nestlings in them. Look how big the baby is in the nest! "Hi. Here's me, too big for this bed!" (I'm dying of laughter.)

I really need to spot the nest in my rhody before they lay eggs. I've heard them doing the mating swoop over the last few days. Once there are eggs, I'll never get close enough to find it without getting assaulted.
 

ajaye

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Yep that worked jenn. Nice photo and what a quaint nest!

I've just been watching my at-the-moment-favourites, white-browed babblers. Such an appropriate name for these guys that dart around in packs like kids on muck up day. I call them bandit birds cos of their head stripe, and gleefully announce 'the bandit birds are here' when they visit. My photo's not great and it doesn't seem right to show only one when there's always a heap of them. But they won't damn well stay still for long enough :) .
 

mccardey

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Lovely little hummingbirds. I want one.

I go for a sunrise walk every morning in Summer - I've decided I'm going to try to take a pic for this thread every day. :)
 

ajaye

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in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I saw a bunch of evening grosbeaks.
they are gorgeous

Other notables for New Year's Day: tooth-billed bowerbird, black-faced monarch, helmeted friarbird and golden whistler. (My pics. Taken earlier.)
great photos, love the monarch

These are the kids that play up outside my studio window... Superb Blue Wrens.
utterly superb!

that junco's so cool
 

Helix

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You lucky North Americans! Hummingbirds are on my must see list, but not this year, unfortunately.

Ajaye, babblers are the devil to photograph! I'm going to think of them as bandit birds from now on.

That was a good haul, Albedo. Lovely photo of the wren and, as far as I'm concerned, any day with parrots is a good day.

Poor birding day here because of the rain -- not even egrets or black kites -- but notables were pied currawongs and a buff-banded rail on the way to Peeramon (my pics, not today) and a channel-billed cuckoo here. Channel-bills are so freakin' big, they lay their eggs in nests of currawongs, magpies (the Australian sort), and ravens.
 
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MaeZe

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I'm in - I love birds, always have, and we have so many species around us down here in the Highlands. I just wish my eyes were younger and quicker at spotting them. These are the kids that play up outside my studio window... Superb Blue Wrens....

Darn hard to do better than Aussie birds with budgies and parakeets flocking together in trees. And Kookaburras were my favorite along with an unknown bird that sounded like a spaceship.

One of my favorite backyard visitors: Pileated Woodpeckers

If I'm sitting in the backyard, these guys sometimes buzz my bright shirts then fly off: Anna's Hummingbirds

These guys look like big moths when they're around: Rufus Hummingbird

We have quail, hawks, and Great Horned Owls in the park behind my house.

Sometimes Bald Eagles soar overhead, often harassed by crows if they fly low enough.

The crows flock together and sometimes look like Alfred Hitchcock's, The Birds.

And there are several Great Blue Heron rookeries nearby.
 
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mccardey

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Oh how gorgeous! I wonder if we get them here...

ETA: Great website, Helix. I'll bookmark that. Friend of yours?
 
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Helix

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It's an excellent resource. I know a few wildlife photographers, but unfortunately Graeme Chapman isn't one of them.

ETA: you should get both the black-faced and spectacled monarchs down your way.
 
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Brightdreamer

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I really need to spot the nest in my rhody before they lay eggs. I've heard them doing the mating swoop over the last few days. Once there are eggs, I'll never get close enough to find it without getting assaulted.

They breed locally this time of year? I knew the Anna's hung around all year, but didn't realize they bred - wasn't sure there'd be enough food to raise kids in winter, what with their high metabolic needs.

Lovely little hummingbirds. I want one.

No... no, you don't. The Aztecs got them right when they linked hummingbirds to their war god - they'll take on anything they think is a threat, or that they just don't like, regardless of size. Mom got attacked by one a few days ago while walking by the feeder. Not just the usual "cursing" twittering; this was an actual dive-bomb attack. (There's a photo in one of Mom's books of two dead hummers; they'd speared each other with their beaks while fighting.)
 

ElaineA

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They breed locally this time of year? I knew the Anna's hung around all year, but didn't realize they bred - wasn't sure there'd be enough food to raise kids in winter, what with their high metabolic needs.

Well this is what I can't figure out. Because they're doing that dive-swoop of mating all over my neighborhood. I have been hearing the whistle their tail-feathers make while walking my dogs. Either they're hooking up or it's one confused male moving tree to tree. :ROFL:

(Is it possible they find a mate and then take some time to build a nest together? I really don't know what's going on.)

As to the second part of your post, the Bully the Hummer hovered "menacingly" in front of a crow that perched on my roof above the feeder this morning. I couldn't see the crow's side of the encounter but I'm pretty sure it was unimpressed. Still, I wouldn't want a hummingbird beak in the eye if I were the crow. I've had to duck their battles on many occasions while tending my garden.
 

jennontheisland

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Well this is what I can't figure out. Because they're doing that dive-swoop of mating all over my neighborhood. I have been hearing the whistle their tail-feathers make while walking my dogs. Either they're hooking up or it's one confused male moving tree to tree. :ROFL:

(Is it possible they find a mate and then take some time to build a nest together? I really don't know what's going on.)

As to the second part of your post, the Bully the Hummer hovered "menacingly" in front of a crow that perched on my roof above the feeder this morning. I couldn't see the crow's side of the encounter but I'm pretty sure it was unimpressed. Still, I wouldn't want a hummingbird beak in the eye if I were the crow. I've had to duck their battles on many occasions while tending my garden.
I've been gradually coaxing crows toward me by tossing them bits of breakfast cereal. They won't come close though, and I'm convinced it's because of the humming birds. Vicious little things.

The males will dive each other as shows of dominance, not just females for mating, so that could be what you're hearing.

Also, it's nice to know we're not the only ones who name our local birds. lol
 

Helix

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Albedo

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Thanks!

Heron, like most wading birds, are just ridiculously elegant. Even when they're derping around with their necks retracted: derp
 

Albedo

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Dusky honeyeaters are elegant little birds, something which is lost in that photo.
None of us look elegant when we're eating, unfortunately.

I think the Aussies are winning this race. What's going on? I wanna see more Eurasian birds.
 

mrsmig

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I haven't had anything interesting in the yard of late (and most of my earlier photos are already posted in the Birds & Birding thread). But I'm enjoying the heck out of these.
 

Helix

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I feel as if I'm hogging this thread, but I got a reasonable haul in this morning's 100 km/hr birding. New species for the year: cattle egrets, figbirds, bar-shouldered doves and Torresian crows. The 2017 list is now up to 46 spp, which isn't too bad, considering the rain.