An Upland Sandpiper. Ms Hook and I are slowly making our way east and are spending a few days in the Black Hills. Saw it on a county lane just NE of Rapid City.
There is a pair of red wattlebirds chasing each other around the eucalyptus trees outside my office window at the moment.
Watched a kestrel hovering over something, then dropping down to get it.
Saw a black-winged redbird (scarlet tanager) while in the mountains of east Tennessee yesterday. That was pretty cool!
Trade you for some of the red-winged blackbirds we have here.
A collared aracari (a kind of toucan, with a serrated beak). Two of them were eating fruit in a capulin tree, at the edge of semi-humid, medium-low-canopy (i.e., six-month dry season) tropical forest and a small cattle ranch in the southern part of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, about fifty miles north of the Guatemala border.
I live on a lake so I often see cool birds. This morning when I went out to scatter some seed and refill feeders, a blue heron was fishing from my dock.
3 huuuge!! gray herons circled overhead, making their peculiar honking noises.
…and some of my budgies (parakeets) had some solstice babies…
They are quite small and pink!!!
(not my pic but same same)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qaajf-Jkzvg/VQ9vYYUpTBI/AAAAAAAADr4/PFL10sKKOfo/s1600/1-chicken%2Bhatch.gif
A siege of herons and at least 3 ospreys (not sure if a boil of ospreys is a thing)
Cool gif. My gf’s budgies have hatched two clutches of eggs and I’ve hand-fed the chicks from day 5 to weaning. Really fun, if a bit nerve wracking.
Nice!!! I let the moms take care of biz…then they join the flock. I really like the racket they make (30 or so) at dawn. Add it to the robins and mockingbirds…its pretty loud!!
We have some dark eyed Juncos who have gotten really brazen about mooching food, I think they are telling their friends too…they go into the bird house when I leave the door open.
They raised a few cowbirds(brood parasite) here by themselves as well, pretty funny…larger dufous bird following around its small nimble parent. :eek:
Thirty!! Our six raise a ruckus. (I found homes for the hand-fed chicks).
Cool!
Missed the edit window https://travelingwanderlust.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/5799732005_7de7630ee5_z.jpg
I went up near Tijeras NM today and saw a red tailed hawk being harassed by a cooper’s hawk. The coop’s was probably nesting and was trying to drive the red tail out of its territory. The red tail didn’t even try to fight it, as it was a faster and more agile hawk.
I once saw a hummingbird chase a cooper’s hawk over my neighborhood.
…haha, yes I thought the website http://www.upatsix.com/ had a silly name…well now I know why.
…yeah I told myself to stop letting them breed, but its somewhat “feel good” to help the teeny critters to life this seemed like a happy couple too, some wont set fertile eggs…PLUS I have “bad cage builders” guilt…ie some rats got in a 1/2 inch space (they can flex their skulls evidently)…grrr:mad::mad: so now I have some pirate birds with one leg. I really dont like rats anymore…
Wow, the Coopers are scary…they are called the F-17s of the bird world… really interesting hunting tactics… stalk, then “explosive chaos”
(I have annual battle with them during fall when they come to hunt/harass our larger caged birds. Great footage of them hunting etc on the Interwebz. I throw small fruits at them, and hit them, dead on, and they just hop back down and go what? Is that a salad? They swooped and hit my boss on the shoulder trying to get at a Caique she was carrying…
Our hummers here in Santa Barbara seem to have no fear either, I suspect they have equal or superior flying skills to even Coopers…on a weird note, last winter I heard this weird buzzing clacking, (hummers when they are mad) and I looked around and saw 2 on the ground, rolling around fighting!!! I thought they were big bumblebees at first:eek:
I see these everyday. (They don’t catch oysters, BTW.)
We also have what is supposed to be one of the largest colonies of Black Skimmers in the northeast. It sure smells like it when the wing is blowing the wrong way.
http://www.bird-friends.com/BirdPage.php?name=Black%20Skimmer
She isn’t rare or anything, but I’ve enjoyed the black capped chickadee lately. The nest is in a box on top of the upright freezer on the back porch, and the babies are right on the verge of flying away now. We worked out a deal - if I need to open the freezer, I come out and sit in my chair (~ 12 feet away,) for a few minutes. Mama tit perches for a minute to watch me, flies away until I walk away from the freezer, and returns about 2 minutes after she hears the back door close again.
The wrens built their nest on the side of the house this year. But I’ve just now put away the winter wreath, because Daddy Wren was using it for a perch until the Littles fledged.
Less common birds: we have about 4.5 acres, and 3.5 of that is old growth pines and hardwood, with a little creek. We have at least one pair of pileated woodpeckers, a pair of great horned owls, and maybe a pair of bald eagles - I see the eagles regularly, but I haven’t found a nest, so they may nest nearby and hunt here.
A flock of snowy egrets honks as they fly from the Day Pond to the Night Pond every day. The Eastern Bluebirds scold me when I pull dead limbs out of the trees in the yard. Red tailed hawks put on aeronautical shows above the tree line.
And the turkey vultures soar and dip and wait. The highway on the other side of the trees has more than its share of dead deer and possums and such, and the buzzards enjoy the bounty.
We have a whimsical wren like that. Every year she (we think she’s the same bird each year) doesn’t nest until all the good spots are taken. Then she builds her nest somewhere inappropriate; in a potted plant, porch furniture, etc, just to be goofy.
I’ve mentioned before we have hoopoes who feed and nest at our house; their children come and live here too! They’re so used to us now that they’ll let us approach to take close-up photos.
Snowy Egret. Actually it was yesterday morning, not today, but it was flying along over I-5 as I drove into work. Probably on its way from one of our coastal lagoons to the next: better fishin’ and all.