Let the meeting of the Bird Clique Now Come to Order

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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:wink:

OK, it has come to my attention that there is a subversive spin-off sub-group of animal lovers on this board … bird watchers. Let us now meet and compare notes.

I’m the rankest amateur of bird-watchers. I can only identify a handful of types and at the moment, I don’t even have a bird-feeder up (hey, I’m the mama of a 2-year-old; I don’t have time for ANYTHING!). But, I recently subscribed to a darling magazine called Birds and Blooms, which is filled with gorgeous photos, stories of interesting birds and questions from readers, as well as some expert advice. If you’re a serious birder, it’s probably too elementary for you, but I enjoy it a lot!

From this site, I also discovered a web site where you can download (for a fee) cellular phone ring tones of tons of bird calls! Unfortunately it doesn’t support my phone (a Treo), but I called them and they hope to add it soon. Many popular phones are supported, however. What fun it would be to suddenly hear your purse singing like a mockingbird!

So, does anyone have any interesting back yard stories to tell? The most interesting thing that’s happened at my house lately is the sighting of an enormous hawk. Our house backs up to a large green space, so we see smaller hawks cruising for mice and voles all the time. But this one was huge, like turkey-buzzard huge! Even my little 2-year old noticed: “Big bwidie!” He’s on his way to becoming a birdwatcher, just like Mom!

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I’m a birdwatcher only in the most marginal sense of the term (“look, a bird!”). I avidly watch birds in my backyard, but seeing as I live in the city, most of them are house sparrows. The saving grace is that the number of native species I might see is small (about two dozen), so I can identify just about all of them, except for the odd warbler that comes traipsing through in the spring.

My most unusual sighting? A ring-necked pheasant in my postage-stamp front yard. (There’s also a mutant half-white sparrow in the neighborhood, who to the casual watcher would appear to be the sole member of an exotic species.)

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Mutant sparrow, eh? I once saw some mafia hit-sparrows. :stuck_out_tongue: At least that’s what I called them. I don’t know what they were doing, but two mean sparrows had another one by the beak, and they were hanging him over the edge of the eave. I figured it had to be mob related.

Check this out, from Birds & Blooms: Feed hummingbirds by hand.

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My cat, Shadow, is an avid pigeon/ring-dove watcher. He sits on the windowsill in my study and spends ages looking at the birds. I’m waiting for the day he tries to get one through the catflap.

He did bring me a dead bluetit the other day when I was ill, obviously hoping it would make me feel sufficiently better that I’d haul myself off the sofa and open more tins of tuna for him.

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We have lots of cool birds here in San Diego, either local or passing through. But I got all excited this weekend because I saw a couple of robins. It seems silly, but we hardly ever get them out here. (I grew up in the midwest and robins were a welcome sight in the spring.)

Other recent fun things were a barn owl near our house and a wild turkey with chicks that we saw on a trip to the mountains.

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Ooo! You can add me. I am also completely amateur but I do love them, and I love all types. I will sit and watch a little sparrow just as eagerly as I will try to find where the woodpecker is tapping. I’m going to buy a birdfeeder this week as a matter of fact. Love them to death!

As for our backyard, not much, though we do have a barn owl living in the vicinity. Mostly I just hear it on nights when the SO is out of town, and let me tell you, that is an eerie noise to hear by yourself. But I have seen it once.

Also a pair of hawks live very close to my office. I see them circling over the Hannaford parking lot some days.

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Probably the most interesting backyard bird I ever had was a Snowy Owl on the roof of my neighbor’s house in the Bronx, the first one I ever saw. It was being harassed by crows and eventually flew off.

Here in Panama I regularly see migrant Peregrine Falcons on the neigboring buildings near my own apartment watching for unwary pigeons. Once one flew up and landed on the air conditioner outside the window where I was working on the computer. It peered in at me until I tried to make a move for a camera, then flew off.

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:eek: Those bastard crows. I mean I love 'em to death, they’re smart as hell, and I would love to have one as a pet. But a snowy owl!

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I am a bit of a bird watcher.

I got started when I saw a Ross’ Goose in my yard a few years ago, where it had no right to be. I bought a big ass bird book and it went on from there.

I have several bluebird houses on my farm and all but one are occupied right now. I spotted a Baltimore Oriole in the yard yesterday, feeding near a pair of Cardinals, it was very colorful.

One thing I have noticed this year , that I don’t recall seeing in previous years, is flocks of Eastern Goldfinches. we have always had them around, but I have been seeing them in flocks of 30-50. It looks like fireworks when they all take off!

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Ellen: Take the Two with you, birdwatching.

Like this.

Step 1: Purchase one of these. The best. Although you will find Peterson field guides to be ubiquitous in Wal-Marts, serious birders use other books, like this Golden Guide.

Step 2: Purchase a pair of binoculars. They should be 7 x 35 power. Wal-Mart binocs will do for starters. They need a sturdy cord to go around your neck (the plastic strap they come with is useless, and will break immediately.)

Step 3: Purchase a pair of toy binoculars for the Two.

Step 4: Locate farm road, city park, cemetary, or other place with trees/bushes/weeds–in other words, habitat that isn’t simply manicured suburbia. Cemetaries with lots of big trees and shrubbery are traditional birdwatching venues, not least because they offer a place to park the car.

Step 5: Put Two in the car. Early morning, like right at/after dawn, is the best time for birding, which is good as that’s when the Two is wide-awake anyway, isn’t he? :smiley: Also, early morning is when you’re least likely to be hassled by other people, “Watcha doin’?” etc. which is annoying.

Step 6: Go birdwatching. Park the car someplace (on gravel back roads, you can leave it by the side of the road near the intersection, and walk down and back), get the Two out, tell him, “We’re going to go for a walk and look at birds.” Show him how to put the binocs up to his eyes–he won’t have the hand-eye coordination or the attention span yet to actually see birds through binocs, hence the toy, and he can pretend to see birds, “do what Mommy’s doing”. But by the time he’s closer to three, he will, and you can get him a cheap pair of real binocs.

Anyway, then you go for your walk and look at birds. By the time he’s tired of it and ready to go home, you will have spotted at least one unfamiliar species.

If he’s the wild roamer type and you worry about him wandering off and getting lost, you can get one of those retractable toddler leashes, because while you’re standing there frowning over your field guide, he WILL wander happily on down the road, ending up in somebody’s front yard. You learn to take quick peeks at the field guide while also watching the kid out of the corner of your eye.

You can also take a small memo book and pencil stub with you and jot down what you’re looking at, for identification later when he’s down for his nap. “Dk blu, sparrow size, sitting on wire” turns out to be an indigo bunting, etc.

There. You can do it.

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President of the Colibri Fan Club, arriving belatedly.

I live in the city, so don’t often see much of interest in my yard – though I do get hummingbirds in the trumpet vine, which never ceases to delight me. I work up in a rural area, so see more interesting birds up here – some bobwhites seem to nest in the field/scrub area by my office, and I regularly see a great blue heron in the creek where I take my afternoon walk. (It’s a little county park, so I also have seen wild turkeys, woodpeckers, and suchlike over there.)

I keep my copy of the Gold Field Guide – which I bought 20+ years ago, when I was living in Santa Barbara (a great birding spot) and actually went out with a birdwatching group a few times – in the office.

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I get Cooper’s hawks in my yard. It makes life at the bird feeder interesting to say the least.

I can identify a lot of birds. Just today I saw orioles, mockingbirds, hummingbirds, kingbirds, and a raven in the foothills near Sandia Mountain. Most of the kingbirds were chasing the raven and the ones that weren’t were chasing each other. Yesterday I saw blue grosbeaks and a black-crowned night heron by the river (I also saw a coyote but no roadrunner) and a couple weeks ago I went birdwatching with the Audubon Society; we found a great horned owl nest. The mother owl just sat there watching us with her round eyes and she looked rather creepy.

I also found a cactus wren nest near my house but I can’t tell if there are any babies in it yet. I might go back and check tomorrow.

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I have noticed the same thing in western Pennsylvania. Also, this is my third summer in my home and it is the first year that squirrels are an annoyance. I am filling my feeders almost daily due to the gorging rodents.

Common birds at my feeder: Cardinals, Blue Jays, Cowbirds, Chickadees, Grackles, Mourning Doves, House finches, Red winged Blackbirds, Robins, Wrens, Nuthatches, Vireos, Goldfinches.

I’ve also occasionally had Flickers, Rose breasted Grosbeaks, and an Oriole.

On kayak trips we always see Great Blue Herons, Little Green Herons, assorted ducks/geese, and Kingfishers.

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Thank you for the guide to bwedie watching with a 2-year-old, Duck Duck Goose! He’s something of a wanderer but the lure of his very own binoculars might keep him in place. I have my own binos, too, as well as a guidebook which is worn out from its years in my purse.

I’d love to see a flock of goldfinches. I see them torpedoing across the green space and my back yard quite often. They look like canaries. What fun.

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I don’t really know any birds aside from the obvious, but a couple of years ago I put a big bird feeder up in my front yard and have had crowds ever since. Regulars include a couple of bluebirds, a couple of cardinals, and a whole bunch of what I call the-little-brown-hoppy-ones. :smiley:

The other regulars are some very fat squirrels (they’re lucky that I like them), the skunk who lives around back, a local woodchuck (we’re pretty sure that it was him managed to snap the four inch square post in half one night, sending it crashing to the ground :eek: ), and a few deer.

The cats and the puppy are fans. They get an excellent view from the cat tree next to the picture window.

ETA: Forgot what I originally came in to say - for some reason there are huge numbers of turkey vultures around here this year. I’m driving by groups of two or three of them nearly every day, and had one downing a carcass just down the street last week.

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Bird lover checking in - we’ve got a lot of Brents, and newly hatched canadian geese floating around now. The broad winged hawks are up from South America, and the majestic Barred Owls are Hooting away in our back wood - WHOO HOOTS FOR YOUUU - Thats what their calls sound like.
We’ve just seen the first Orioles and they are building their teardrop shaped nests in our tulip trees, and the fox sparrows and Carolina Wrens are nesting now too. I’ve been hearing the screech owls at night around here, that is a good sign, it means they are in the breeding mood, which is very good for those little guys…

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I would dearly love an owl of my own. By that of course I mean one to live near me and HOO HOO HOOT all the time. You’d think with my big open space behind the house they’d be hunting out there with the hawks, but I think our new subdivision has such a dearth of trees that they’ve no nesting spots. Strangely, on our very first night in the house I heard an owl, but nothing since and it’s been two and a half years! I wonder if there’s some way I could entice him back.

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I plan my annual holidays around a decent birding spot - lots of waterbirds, some rare and endangered species.

My favourites are the Knysna Loerie, Masked Weaverbird, Black Oystercatcher and the Pied Kingfisher, and I regularly see African Penguins, and have occasionally seen strayed Rockhopper Penguins.

I’ve never quite gotten the attraction for raptors, though. Give me waterbirds any day.

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Ooh! Ooh! Can I be in the Bird Clique? I’m a city boy, and I mostly like city birds, and I’ve kept parakeets and cockateils as pets and plan to take in another parakeet quite soon (but what I’d like to adopt someday, if I had the money for one, is an African Gray parrot).

Me too. I’ve wanted a crow or a raven ever since the time way long ago when I was a kid and reAlized what elegant-looking, intelligent and interesting creatures they are. Too bad the damn government had to step in and forbid us the pleasure, especially since anyone with a .22 is free to shoot as many of the poor things as s/he wants, in the USA. (I think I might have just come up with my first Pit subject!). Why that is true I cannot guess.

The Bay Area has many crows and a fair number of ravens too. Sometimes on Ocean Beach you can see pairs of the latter working in partnership – they’re as big as the gulls or damned near so, and seem quite unintimidated by them. Which is pretty brave I think, since seagulls vastly outnumber ravens. You only find ravens at the beach and a few wild-tinged corners of San Francisco, like Lands End, but their slightly smaller brethren the crows have become quite the cosmopolitans --you see and hear them everywhere in the city, and I like that very much.

There’s another avian urbanite who’s very common here, but I don’t know what kind they are – they’re between a finch and a robin in size, and have feathers of a uniform shiny black – which sets off their bright yellow eyes and makes them very dapper little fellows indeed. I’ve heard 'em called starlings, grackles, cowbirds, catbirds, or just “those little black birds.” Some people regard them as varmints, but I like’em. – the impudent, near-fearless wee urchins!

Oh well, I like pigeons too. Not many city people will admit to that.

As for the famous wild San Francisco parrots, I’ve only seen two in many years of living hereabouts. I was walking up Chestnut Street one bright afternoon and suddenly heard a god-awful racket start up over my head, one that I knew somehow to be directed at me. I looked up and saw two bright green hookbills with bright red faces perched on the telephone wires, and they were giving me Hell, too> I recognized them to be cherry-head conures right away, and stopped to listen to their carrying-on, feeling lucky and delighted. The famous flock featured in the flick are all cherry heads, I believe-- descendants of a mass escape from a petshop-bound shipping crate many years ago. There’s another group of free-feathered parrots living over in the Dolores /Mission Street area; I’ve nevefr seen them but have been given to understand that they’re a more heterogenous crew, with individuals of several differnt species of conure and a few Amazons --these guys were probably pets at one time, or their parents were.
DLuxN8R-13

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Bird-head checking in. I have a parrot and a java finch. They attract a wide range of birds to my balcony, the noisiest and most playful being these.