Every day I see crows, Canada geese and several kinds of ducks, a kingfisher, two bald eagles (their nest is nearby), seagulls, a Blue Heron, several types of ground-feeding birds and (at this time of year) robins, swallows and Purple Martins. I live on a lake in the Puget Sound area.
Less often I have seen woodpeckers, a golden eagle, owls, larks, hummingbirds and yellow finches.
The ducks and Canada geese regularly raise their offspring on this lake, so I see lots and lots of ducklings and goslings during spring and early summer.
“Not a bird but it flies” category: during the spring and summer evenings I also watch a small colony of bats eating bugs above the lake.
On the avergae day I’ll see most of : pigeons, redwing starlings, common sparrows, various seagulls, Cape white-eyes, bulbuls, hadeda ibis, helmeted guinea fowl, masked weavers, pied crows, moorhens, Egyptian geese and flamingos
Canada geese, cardinals, house sparrows (we have some that have lived in our eaves for many years now), bluejays, robins (American). We have a robin that is distinctive due to a feather that’s bent at an angle. Almost any time I’m out digging in the yard, he’ll be there hopping around, head-cocked eyeing the ground, impatiently waiting for a worm or grub to turn up. If I’m out in the yard not digging, he’ll be like “Where’s the shovel, asshole?”
The most common bird around here seems to be the common myna (Acridotheres tristis), which is an introduced species and a bit of a pest. Of the native species, one that I see a lot is the sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita), a very distinctive an noisy bird that flies around in flocks.
Ours are definitely very tame. The feeders hang right outside the kitchen window, under the eaves, facing the kitchen sink. We can stand there and wash dishes, not 3 feet from them, and they don’t move. They’re cute little things. The males are just now starting to get a tinge of red on the top of the head.
Mostly small gray birds that flutter around the bushes and trees near the house. After that the neighbor’s chickens, and then crows. On any clear day hawks can be seen overhead. We’ll see cardinals every year in the spring but rarely other times. A lot of other birds will come by on occasion.
In DC, not much. Sparrows, rock doves, common starlings every day.
Weekly are mockingbirds, robins, cardinals, mourning doves. I think catbirds, too. There are some gull type birds near the rivers, and great blue herons along Rock Creek, but I’m not around there much.
Honestly I don’t really pay much attention unless it’s something unusual or previously unseen by me. There’s a lot of pretty common birds out there that I’ve never noticed. Saw my first orioles (Bullock’s and Scott’s) last month, in NM and AZ.
crows
wild turkeys (it is crazy how many wild turkeys we having in the suburban areas of Sacramento)
yellow billed magpies
a variety of egrets and herons
I work at a private small parrot aviary in Santa Barbara, near the coast. great bird habitat, lots of native plants and even more non native ones to eat. I also put out seed and nectar feeders, whats 20 more birds to feed…haha…
It often seems like many birds want to come over and visit, or as with the coopers hawks, eat some birds. They are lethal and amazing tho.
So I always am on alert for newcomers, got my Petersons bird book and binoculars closeby.
Nesting season always brings some rescue scenario, I’ve gotten good at hiding fledglings off in bushes after they fall down. Helped a red shouldered hawk fledgling get unstuck from some bushes once, that was thrilling…parents were a bit mad…
Most common sightings:
Sparrows,towhees, robins, woodpeckers, 2-3 species of hunmmingbirds, warblers, crows, bluejays, orioles, vireos, mockingbirds,bushtits, cowbirds etc etc. and then the larger predators, red tailed and red shouldered hawks, the occasional osprey, the large blue herons, and smaller white ones.(stealing our goldfish)…
Most of the common birds I see daily, the rarer ones like the orioles and/or herons perhaps once a month. I ride my biccycle to the ocean daily, which borders urban areas and riparian woodlands, so then there is the same crew, plus all the ocean birds, which are quite plentiful here. There is a huge cormorant nesting zone down by the ocean, kinda fun to watch them sunning.
Most interesting bird sighting for me recently, the flock of hundreds if not thousands of robins who descended on our neighbors cotoneaster bushes in the fall…absolutely nuts. I ran out to see what was happening:eek: I understand its fairly common.
In Toronto, I see pigeons (#1 by far), sparrows, robins, and occasionally a cardinal or blackbird. Probably some crows, ducks or gulls too, depending on where I happen to be.
I assume you’re in Australia? I visited Sydney once, and was walking through the Botanic Gardens when I came upon a tree full of what I now know - thanks to your post - were lorikeets (Trichoglossus moluccanus). I’ve seen some colorful birds native to North America, such as the painted bunting (Passerina ciris), but damn, those guys took it to a whole 'nother level. The most amazing thing, to me, is that they weren’t out in the Never Never, or in the rainforests of Queensland; they were right in the heart of urban Sydney.
A poster upthread reminded me that I should have asked y’all to give your locales when you post; I’m in urban Atlanta.
House sparrows, white-winged doves, and Eurasian doves are the most frequently seen outside my house. There used to be a lot of mourning doves but they don’t compete well with the white-wings and Eurasians so their numbers dropped. In the park up the road I see flocks of 17 or 18 grackles and once I saw 17 bushtits (That is their real name. Don’t laugh.)
Robins are iffy. Sometimes I don’t see any and then the next day I’ll see two dozen. The records was when I saw 100 in less than an hour in a cemetery in Lexington KY.
I don’t see jays anymore–either the West Nile got them or they moved to Santa Fe. I’ve seen hundreds of crows leave their roost early one morning not far from my house. There are also places in town where one can see big flocks of geese and ducks and swarms of hummingbirds.
Around my house, or on my way to or at work: Black Vulture, Yellow-headed Caracara, Clay-colored Thrush, Tropical Mockingbird, Brown Pelican, Magnificent Frigatebird, Laughing Gull, Neotropic Cormorant, Yellow-crowned Amazon Parrot, Orange-chinned Parakeet, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Garden Emerald, Barred Antshrike, Red-crowned Woodpecker, Streaked Saltator, Great Kiskadee, Social Flycatcher, Tropical Kingbird, Saffron Finch, Variable Seedeater, Rock Pigeon, House Sparrow. On rare occasions Keel-billed Toucan.
A couple of days after I first moved to Australia, I was walking around the suburban streets of where I was staying, looking at these new birds I hadn’t seen before, sad that they all seemed to be grey or brown or black, while my native New Zealand has tons of birds that, if not brightly coloured, were at least varicoloured with stripes and flecks of white and yellow and green, etc. But all the Australian birds I saw, even the odd ones like ibis or cockatoos, were dull, plain, and single-coloured.
And then, mere minutes after I had that thought, a flock of rainbow lorikeets screamed* by, and all was forgiven.
