For the Birds and Bird Lovers 2018 CAUTION: LARGE IMAGES

Helix · Apr 14, 2019

Public service announcement: cassowaries make really bad pets.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ant-bird-kills-owner-in-florida-after-he-fell

mrsmig · Apr 14, 2019

"It is not clear what happened to the bird." Oh dear, oh dear.

MaeZe · Apr 14, 2019

The video of the bird (not the bird that killed the man) attacking the ground and trees is bizarre. What strange birds.

Helix · Apr 14, 2019

I'm not sure what's going on there. They jump and twist if they think something's attacking/is about to attack them. (There's a really cute video around of a young cassowary having a bath in a rainforest stream when a twig floats into it. The reaction is exactly like someone swimming into a piece of submerged kelp.) Emus do much the same thing.

Cassowaries also kick trees to dislodge fruit.

MaeZe · Apr 14, 2019

Helix said:
I'm not sure what's going on there. They jump and twist if they think something's attacking/is about to attack them. (There's a really cute video around of a young cassowary having a bath in a rainforest stream when a twig floats into it. The reaction is exactly like someone swimming into a piece of submerged kelp.) Emus do much the same thing. ...

MaeZe · Apr 29, 2019

The explore cams are getting busy again and I turned it on today to find a bat giving birth!

Bat cam

There are lots of captured images in the comments. I didn't even know how bats gave birth until now. They do it hanging upside down. Amazing.

Scroll down in the comments and there's a good video posted by Martina.

mrsmig · May 25, 2019

We had a violent but mercifully brief storm blow through the other day. Afterward I found this little fledgling perched on the deck, looking pretty bedraggled. I believe it's a White-Breasted Nuthatch. When I came out to check on it, it did its best to fly away but only made it as far as my neighbor's fence before ending up on the ground. I picked it up and put it into one of our cherry trees until it could dry out. In spite of its condition and size, it was pretty feisty.

Helix · Jun 3, 2019

I hope the nuthatch sorted itself out, mrsmig!

I've just come back from the Gulf of Carpentaria in Far North Queensland. Part of this area had massive floods this wet season and there are still a few cattle and wallaby carcases rotting on the fences. We saw lots of great birds. Plenty of raptors, including black, whistling and brahminy kites, wedge-tailed eagles, white-bellied sea eagles, brown falcons, ospreys and nankeen kestrels. But the birds of the trip for me were two lifers from the forests along the banks of the Gregory River, and one I'd only glimpsed before in mangroves near Broome. Please excuse the back-of-camera shots. I still haven't downloaded the images yet.

Lifers: Buff-sided robin and male purple-crowned fairy-wren in eclipse plumage. This Wikipedia page has much better photos of the male and female fairy-wrens in breeding plumage.

Non-lifer, but still a good bird: White-breasted whistler. The sandfly bites were worth it!

mrsmig · Jun 4, 2019

Gorgeous photos, even in their raw form. Your trip sounds amazing.

MaeZe · Jun 4, 2019

mrsmig said:
Gorgeous photos, even in their raw form. Your trip sounds amazing.

Yes, yes and yes!

Helix · Jun 4, 2019

Thank you, mrsmig and MaeZe!

I'm off to the Papua New Guinea highlands next. Hoping to see some of the New Guinea birds of paradise, but just being there will be exciting.

MaeZe · Jun 6, 2019

I need advice from one of you experts if you have any advice for me. So a little finch family (not sure the exact species but they are common here in Bellevue year round) moved into my gutter under the eave. They apparently fledge quickly because I never heard the babies begging food.

So today two fledges are in my entry way. It's an enclosed patio except there's no roof. They're very cute and I've been careful not to let them out the door until they can fly out by themselves. It's common for these birds to get fed on the ground when they fledge, it's their most vulnerable I think. A stellar jay was eyeing them this morning but it flew off when I came out. But I digress.

The question: So they've been flitting around and tonight one or both of them knocked half the nest down. What I'm hoping someone knows is, should I put it back? Or should I straighten up the rest of it that is hanging out of the nest? I don't know if fledges go back to sleep in the nest after they leave.

What do you wonderful folks think?

Norman Mjadwesch · Jun 11, 2019

I’m not an expert, not even close, but last year the swallow nest under my veranda fell after we got some torrential sideways rain. The babies were OK, fortunately, and I rescued them before my dog found them. I wasn’t able to put the nest back as it was, so I cut the side out of a plastic milk carton, put the nest and the babies inside, and hung it as close to the place where it had been built.

The parents were very agitated throughout this process, but when I was done they came back to check on the little ones. Weirdly, they accepted the new nest and raised the young ones with no further misadventure.

I realise that some species might not be so accommodating of such interference, but if I hadn’t done anything they’d have died.

To answer your question, if they don’t go back to the nest once they’ve left it, you lose nothing by hanging it up. If they do go back, same outcome…

mrsmig · Jun 11, 2019

MaeZe said:
I need advice from one of you experts if you have any advice for me. So a little finch family (not sure the exact species but they are common here in Bellevue year round) moved into my gutter under the eave. They apparently fledge quickly because I never heard the babies begging food.

So today two fledges are in my entry way. It's an enclosed patio except there's no roof. They're very cute and I've been careful not to let them out the door until they can fly out by themselves. It's common for these birds to get fed on the ground when they fledge, it's their most vulnerable I think. A stellar jay was eyeing them this morning but it flew off when I came out. But I digress.

The question: So they've been flitting around and tonight one or both of them knocked half the nest down. What I'm hoping someone knows is, should I put it back? Or should I straighten up the rest of it that is hanging out of the nest? I don't know if fledges go back to sleep in the nest after they leave.

What do you wonderful folks think?

Sorry to be so late answering this (your problem may have solved itself by now), but in general, once a fledgling has left the nest, they don't return. Mom and Pop will hang around to feed them and generally keep an eye on them, so unless the fledgling is in danger (e.g. a cat is in the yard), I'd leave them alone. There's nothing wrong with trying to put the nest back, but chances are slim that the birds will use or even need it.

MaeZe · Jun 11, 2019

Problem is solved, and no worries that people didn't respond quickly. The little fledges stayed two days in the enclosed patio. I had to be careful opening the door so they wouldn't fly into the house given they panic-fly as they were learning. I did find a stellar jay sitting on the gutter looking into the patio once but it flew off when I entered.

The half of the nest that fell ended up kind of torn apart so I left it. Another part of the nest was partially fell out so the parents had been flying in and out. I was amazed at how well constructed the nest was. Later I'm going to clean the rest out and let them build another one if they choose.

Helix · Jul 21, 2019

I've been away in Papua New Guinea and the Top End (northern Northern Territory and Western Australia). I didn't take many decent photos, but here are a few.

Male Ribbon-tailed Astrapia (bird of paradise) from the PNG Highlands

Male Regent Whistler from the same location

Male Crimson Finch from Kununurra, Western Australia

Mid-sized Saltwater Crocodile from Yellow Water, Kakadu, Northern Territory

Were these trips amazing experiences? Yes, they were.

mrsmig · Jul 22, 2019

Love these!

Helix · Jul 22, 2019

It is an amazing world out there!

ElaineA · Jul 31, 2019

My sister-in-law is friends with a local NPR-station reporter (Nat'l Public Radio, for the non-USians, here). They exercise in the park in the morning, and they saw a man doing something with birds, so they went to investigate. Turned out he was tagging juvenile Cooper's Hawks. Deb, the reporter, ran home, got her gear, and came back to interview him and take some pictures. I know Donna has lots of Cooper's Hawks in her neighborhood, but I've never seen one here (that I knew of). I had no clue they were a flourishing population in Seattle. Every day I learn something new is a good day.

Article with some beautiful photos, and the 2-minute radio piece here.

MaeZe · Aug 1, 2019

That's fantastic. The face on that hawk is entrancing.

This was in my Yahoo newsfeed this evening:

Audubon Photography Awards: Is this the 'perfect' wildlife picture?

An astonishing battle of wills between an eagle, a fox and a rabbit was one of several striking entries in the annual photography awards of the Audubon Society. Its photography director Sabine Meyer explains what it takes to capture a prize-winning picture.

Play the video, it's only 2:44 minutes. The bird images are mind-blowingly beautiful.

mrsmig · Aug 2, 2019

Gosh, MaeZe, those are beautiful. Thanks for sharing the link.

(And that fox is a gutsy young'un - it's small enough to be a second course for that eagle!)

ElaineA · Sep 24, 2019

Just spied a beautiful Townsend's warbler around my birdbath, which I'm particularly tickled about because warblers, in general, aren't faring well in many of their other habitats. (Sorry, my photo was through a window and too blurry to post, but it looked to be an adult female.) I'm sure many of us who post here have heard about the recent findings of a staggering decline of birds in North America, an estimated loss of almost 3 billion birds, or 29% of the total population, since 1970.

On the downside (for the warblers) in my yard, we also have two Cooper's hawks who, after 20+ years, have finally found my songbird hunting ground. Yikes! I don't provide seed feeders (except under extreme weather circumstances like last February), so at least the hawks have to work harder to snag anything, smarty pants birds. I enjoy seeing the gorgeous raptors up close and personal (they perch very close to my windows), but I'm relieved they weren't around today.

MaeZe · Oct 22, 2019

Scroll down to the short video of the bird call.

Current Biology: Extremely loud mating songs at close range in white bellbirds

What a fun bird call.

mrsmig · Oct 23, 2019

That's an extraordinary sound, MaeZe. It sounds more electronic than biological.

For the Birds and Bird Lovers 2018 CAUTION: LARGE IMAGES

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