He probably sees his reflection in the window and is attacking the ‘other bird.’ My husband used to work in a building with mirrored windows and this would happen every spring.
It’s that other bird’s fault. He just won’t back down. My old office had a mirrored window. Every spring a cardinal would land on the ledge and challenge his reflection. He would chirp very loudly, then puff himself up, and finally attack. If only that other bird would back down.
I went home for lunch today and the cardinal was at it again. So I stacked some stuff up in front of the window and it seems to have mellowed him out some.
That’s the pigeons on top of our garden fence. Every time you look out the kitchen window they’re at it. But at what?
Have you had more sightings/pics of your fox squirrels?
Elsewhere: Today’s bike ride was a short list of failures. No early purple orchids; no herons; no ospreys; but here’s a bluebell for @carnut:
Keep us updated on the eagle chicks!
j
No, but we are avoiding that area of our property other than to fill the feeder twice daily. The biologist feels strongly about avoiding human exposure, other than when he came with his mini-blind.
Not in nature, in our back yard I saw several Curved Bill Thrashers, a Stellar Jay (or maybe two, the second sighting looked like a female but I wasn’t close enough for my crappy eyes to be sure), House Sparrows, House Wrens, White Winged Doves, a young looking Cardinal, Black Crowned Sparrows on their way north, hummingbirds and then Ravens and Turkey Buzzards off in the distance.
I’ve been seeing a few random butterflies as well. Spring is finally here and I’m pretty happy about it.
Why thanks for the bluebells, and windflowers too!
The eaglets are being hidden by their parents, not because of the camera but because of the freezing temperatures this weekend. I do plan to keep an eye on them.
Ospreys. Another fail. They break their journey from Spain to Wales at Weirwood reservoir, and the first sightings were a day or two ago, so I spent a spare hour yesterday in the hide (blind) there. Sweet nuthin’. I figure you can plan as much as you like, but it’s basically down to luck - last year (post 509) I just happened across one at a nearby lake, but this year I’m misfiring.
Still, an hour in a hide is rarely wasted. This turned out to be the most intriguing thing I saw:
That’s an Egyptian Goose, and he (I presume) stood on his platform and shouted his head off for almost the entire time I was there. Just before I left, I think I found out why he was shouting. This photo is a better view of him:
So, a couple of points, and you’ll have to click on the photo if you want to check this out (annoyingly, google photos doesn’t display the full image).
- You would have said that this is not well camouflaged bird - yes? I may be able to persuade you otherwise
- A second Egyptian Goose turned up (!). See if you can find (I presume) her.
j
Top right of the full image, one tenth in from the top, two tenths in from the right
Tis the season!
Here’s a link to the eagle cam: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/features/webcams/eaglecam/index.html
I just saw a bit of feeding going on. But still below freezing cold today.
Saturday on the prairie:
Photobombing bird:
A close-up. These guys are only two to three feet long.
And I didn’t take any pictures of them, but we are being swarmed by caterpillars! Every time I go to open the front gate, I have to get a stick and knock them off the latch because there are so many I can’t even see it. They are white-marked tussock moth and forest tent caterpillars, so they aren’t going to turn into anything attractive either. I can’t remember them ever plaguing us like this before.
Prairie? Which prairie?
I live near Gainesville, on the outskirts of a protected wetland. We just call it the prairie. 
Ahh….thanks. I an surrounded by hundreds of square miles of prairie (Nebraska) and was envious of all that water!
And for a fun creature near me:
Back when I was taking entomology in college, as part of the course we were supposed to make curatorial collections. Just about the most sought after critters were tiger beetles (obviously not endangered ones). Partly it was that they were often pretty metallic colors, but the other reason is that they are hard to catch. I mean really hard unless you get lucky. One often visualizes larger beetles as not particularly fast, land-bound, trundling things. Not tiger beetles - they’re quick-to-fly visual predators with huge eyes and they are very alert. Trying a net over one was generally an exercise in frustration. Very few of us ended up the semester with one in a box.
Thank you for enjoying the very unique beetles in my little piece of the prairie. Their habitat is about 2 miles from my back yard. I consider it humanity’s good fortune that our city and county preserve and guard that habitat very zealously.
That reminds me - I have some suitable-for-nesting-material saved up over the winter, I need to put that out for the nest-builders.
Celandines, masses of them, in woods just north of London. I can’t remember having seen so many.
Also the first butterflies of spring (peacocks) and the first goslings (Egyptian). No bluebells here as yet.
After tempting everything out with a week’s good weather we’re supposed to get the frosts back this week. Typical.
Oooo - I didn’t know you had a personal prairie. If you have any prairie stories, you might like to post them over in the Specialized Habitats And Microenvironments thread, where there’s a bit of a sporadic prairie conversation going on.
j
That’s quite the timewaster (in a good way). I saw feeding and then parent number two turned up with what appeared to be a fish (?), which got tucked away in the larder at the back of the nest.
Jeez, even the interlopers are exotic. Do we know what it is?
j
I thought someone might catch that. A blue heron, maybe?