I miss watching the bore come in and move out. It’s certainly one of the fun parts about visiting Bristol. My ex’s son used to surf the bore but after a trip to Australia, he declared it dull. But I couldn’t get used to the idea that an city so far from the sea would have such noticeable tides.
I was driving to work this morning and had to stop for a dozen or so turkeys on the road. They were in no hurry to move, so after a minute I beeped my horn, totally freaking them out.
They flew. some to the left, some to the right, one right at me, landing on my Wrangler’s soft top for a few seconds, then flying away. The dogs were nonplussed.
Arthur Carlson was right!
and yes, I know the difference between wild and domesticated turkeys
I saw an Eastern Phoebe in the cherry tree outside my office window today, eating a bright red berry. It amuses me they belong to a family called the tyrant flycatchers. Hardly seems appropriate!
Three times in the last week and a bit I have cycled past a local deer park; and on two of those occasions I saw, standing in the road ahead of me (that is to say, very much not in the park) a splendid male with a fine rack of antlers. He didn’t hang around to be photographed. I can’t figure out if he’s escaped from the park, or is drawn to it by the smell of many does in heat (is it too late in the year for that?).
Anyhoo, here is one of the inhabitants of said deer park, more obliging when it comes to photography. It’s not exactly nature, but they were looking particularly handsome.
:sigh: - uploading from google photos has cut the legs off. Click for the full photo.
j
(I’m not going to edit that post again; but when I did edit it just now to correct a couple of typos, and reposted the corrected version, most of the legs were reinstated. Weird.)
j
Not seeing, but hearing - I’m hearing all the flights of Canada geese taking off from Wascana Park, practising for their flights south, where they will winter over on all those sweet southern US golf courses and parks.
Y’re welcome.
Did I ever post my most recent photos of Salt Creek Falls? These are from about six weeks ago.
Beautiful!
A week ago I posted a photo of a female pheasant. Today we had an encounter with a male:
Again, they’re not uncommon, you just don’t usually get this close to them.
j
Six Bald Eagles in the last two days while boating behind the barrier islands of South Jersey. They aren’t unheard of at this time of the year but usually its one here and there. They dwarf the osprey that have become common but have long since headed south for the winter. I can’t help but be impressed by these birds.
My favorite non-nectar drinking bird. For some reason they disappeared for a few years so it’s nice to see them back again. Very picky eaters. They’ll pick up and shake peanuts and discarding them until they find one that sounds good to them.
^ The picky peanut behavior is one I’ve noticed also. Are they going for the heaviest peanut?
I’ve tried peanuts to attract crows - there are plenty of them around. I wanted to see if we could “train” them or at least get them to display their intelligence. However, we also have many squirrels and they always find the peanuts first.
We put out shelled corn in our yard. The deer and turkeys eat most of it, but the crows like it as well. Crows fly around, following my gf as she fills different feeders, until she eventually dumps the corn.
That’s my guess too. The other thing it may be is checking if the shell is solid/unbroken. From the rate they go thru peanuts I assume they store most of them.
Crows are big on shelled corn. Like kayaker, I put it out for deer and turkeys but it draws a lot of crows also.
Speaking of squirrels, that’s how I learned I could train blue jays. One day I noticed that the jays would follow the squirrels and watch them bury the peanuts. As soon as the squirrels left, the jays came down and stole the peanuts. From then on, I would lob peanuts in the general direction of the jays. Soon enough they just started coming to me to get their peanuts.
Oh, yeah, crows and jays are both quite intelligent.
Speaking of … I’m currently watching a pair of crows harass a hawk that’s softly, endlessly looping just outside the window at work. They won’t quit, and the hawk seems determined to stick around.
Must be a favored hunting area or something.
West Nile Virus crashed corvid populations across North America. That’s probably why you stopped seeing them. Crows, jays, and ravens are rebuilding their populations.
I never thought of that. I assumed it was climate change, like I’ve seen with other birds , most notably robins. Robins used to be early spring to late fall and now just stay here until they kick out their brood and then they disappear until next spring. We’ve even lost really common things like House Finches. This is all in southwestern Minnesota lakes country.
Our main residence is in New York and I’m lucky enough to be able to walk out my front door and cross Riverside Drive and I’m in a great birdwatching park. Go the other way a few blocks and I’m in Central Park, which is even better. I haven’t noticed the same changes in behavior there, but I do spen less time birding in the cold months.
Drove down to Pacific Grove to check out the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary this morning. I was reading the numbers are up this year. There were several large clumps/clusters but still far from the populations I’ve seen in the past in places like the reserve in Grover Beach.
