BIRDS

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Dendroica-petechia-001.jpg/800px-Dendroica-petechia-001.jpg

http://www.missico.com/personal/tidbits/images/mad_bluebird_large.jpg

even Jonathan Franzen thinks so

self-lol

is youn still searching for the ivory-billed woodpecker?

Wow guyz there was a wren just sitting on the bin outside the window. I don't remember the last time I saw one of those.

Reed Bunting in my folks garden the other day.

Handsome chap.

http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/img.asp?i=photos/birdguide/reed-buntings.jpg

bloody bird image hotlinking prevention

http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/reedbunting_male_300_tcm9-142425.jpg

thanks RSPB.

We have a big climbing jasmine that is breaking down its puny trellis -- I was going to trim the vines and shore it up with a new trellis, but a robin started a nest in it last Saturday and now I don't want to disturb it. The nest is only 5' off the ground, so I'll be able to get pics of the nest and eggs and babies as spring and summer progress.

like 15 minutes ago i was in a garage lights dimmed listening to music chilling and then there is a significant buzz next to my left shoulider ! i check and get the fear for a sec thinking it's a giant water bug about to bite me but it was an exhausted hummingbird , that managed to cling on some box and sort of passed out. a piece of string twirled around its beak, i could pull on it to free it and it wouldn't wake up n.e.way turns out it was pecking on a chunk of sticky stuff around one of it's foot, was obsessed by it. i wrapped it up in a piece of clothe and cleaned it with a tweezer. put it outside it managed to take off but took off straight up all confused feeling caught up under the roof of a porch. idk it landed , i took it up and put it in great wide open space and it took off in a similar way, sort of straight up til i lost sight of it. now i wonder if i should have done things differently to optimize it's chances of survival. not that it matters much, they are not close to being extinct i guess, but I'm under the impression there is a possibility it got high enough, got exhausted again and sort of fell to a critical injury and end up dying. hm. good luck little dude , u got me involved! http://i.pbase.com/o6/16/585616/1/74204871.6hvWOxlQ.birdhummingbirdgreen8237.jpg

a surprise cute little memento mori, that i could have done without, but it's sort of always like that , with that sot of thing yeh

I was happy to see the hummingbirds come around this year anyway even though I didn't put out feeders for them.

hey look at those birds

yo YOC representin', i ain't forgotten u guys

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/central.park.birds.2.887058.html

Did you just say he contacts you through a fucking bird?

What particular species... of bird?

http://jet-point.com/wp-content/ice_cream_stealing_birds_6.jpg

http://jet-point.com/wp-content/ice_cream_stealing_birds_11.jpg

http://jet-point.com/wp-content/ice_cream_stealing_birds_1.jpg

picturesofbirdsstealingicecream.com

loooooooooooooooooooooooooool

i fucking love gulls

That's kind of horrifying for me. I'm sort of scared of birds. :-(

Herring Gulls are just so garrulously kickass and obnoxious in a sort of totally awesome way

They all scare me.

Best gull story ever is that one time when they were little my friends Kevin and Jef where swimming in the ocean and Jef picked his nose and smeared it on Kevin and then ate the rest. Kevin was so grossed out that he puked right then and there in the ocean immediately after which a seagull flew down and ate the puke. True story.

Lesson? Gulls eat vomit and are therefore gross. My friends are gross too but also v v awesome.

All seabirds (and indeed most birds) eat vomit. When adults feed their young, they do so at first largely through regurgitation.

What a delightful conversation!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2421246/Vicar-has-to-wear-hard-hat-to-church-after-seagull-attack.html

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Savage-Seagull-Attack-Leaves-Woman-Bloodied-And-Shaken-In-Somerset/Article/200807215030277?lpos=UK_News_Article_Related_Content_Region_13&lid=ARTICLE_15030277_Savage_Seagull_Attack_Leaves_Woman_Bloodied_And_Shaken_In_Somerset

Please check out the caption on that article's picture. I think we should invite the guy who wrote it.

Scary! But yes, great caption.

The url reminds me of the Zoolander speech - no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied along the way, just so long so you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied and dying along the way...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090320/twl-environment-us-birds-usa-1202b49.html

good luck usa

A robin is nesting in an archway thing in my parents' backyard:

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c287/expatrica/P5090114.jpg

So blue!

What sort of robin? A real robin or yr silly "American robin" which is actually a thrush?

x-post Aren't they awesome? I got a bunch of cool pics. I keep trying to get one of the mama but she flies away when I get within 3 ft of the nest. :-(

LJ - I don't know, I guess an American one? One of the brown and orange ones.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/derby/content/images/2005/01/13/2005_feature_bird_watching_robin_gallery_470x300.jpg

'real' robin. I'm sure it will be this, the american robin is also brown and orange but larger.

They're nosey little birds, and will get very close to you if you're minding your own business. I think you getting close to their nest is not a great idea. I'm always greeted with friendly robins when I'm out fishing, stealing my maggots.

camping in wales once, i was awoken to a robin that had hopped into our tent.

We have Blackbirds nesting in our garden and they have lovely blue eggs too. I imagine it's a "don't eat me" message to other animals. Not that it stops the bastid squirrels who will eat anything.

Thrush eggs are speckled blue incidentally so these are mos' def' robins.

Ste is right about the noseyness too, as soon as we start gardening they'll come hopping along and sneak any worms dug up. They get bullied by the sparrows in our garden but they can mostly hold their own.

i think i still immediately think of christmas when i see robins, from when i was a kid and seeing them on christmas cards all the time.

xp, yeah i think they stick to the same 'zone' more than most other birds, so when other birds enter their territory they can become very defensive.

The UK Robin is limited to Europe, you don't get them in North America. Those are definitely American Robin eggs too, ours lay 5 or 6 little pale brown jobs.

new garden has Coal Tits nesting in a box on a Scots pine

The robins in our garden are being very charming at the moment. One of them, presumably the male, keeps coming to the feeder to get a sunflower seed, then flying up to a nearby branch to feed it to his mate as a sort of little love offering.

x-post - we've got blue tits, kind of apprehensive about the chicks first few days 'in the wild' what with all the cats round our way (the furry bastards).

Dippers rule. Only one I've seen 'live' is on the river in Betws-y-Coed. Amazing wee thing.

I was totally gobsmacked I was like there is no way I'm finding this animal in a 2 mile stretch of creek and YET

mine was in Matlock Bath, was lucky enough to get a good photo and video too, in breeding song too

a lifetime of gazing at creeks and streams thinking 'just maybe' and it's when my gf has said no we're not spending 30 quid each on the cable car and i'm moping behind her back into town, look down and pow

Never seen a dipper, but always feel a kinship with them as someone who likes to sing AND swim,

Apparently this is another case where the UK version looks a lot cooler than the US one. Still hope to see an American Dipper one day.

uk one looks like the us one but with a cool paint job

A couple of weeks ago I saw a bearded vulture with my own eyes, it was absolutely majestic. Today I went to Wikipedia to learn more about it and.... jeez

It usually disdains the actual meat and lives on a diet that is typically 85–90% bones. While the bone marrow contains fat and energy, they consume all of it.[26]This is the only living bird species that specializes in feeding on bones.

The bearded vulture can swallow whole or bite through brittle bones up to the size of a lamb's femur[28] and its powerful digestive system quickly dissolves even large pieces. The bearded vulture has learned to crack bones too large to be swallowed by carrying them in flight to a height of 50–150 m (160–490 ft) above the ground and then dropping them onto rocks below, which smashes them into smaller pieces and exposes the nutritious marrow.[9] They can fly with bones up to 10 cm (3.9 in) in diameter and weighing over 4 kg (8.8 lb), or nearly equal to their own weight.[9]

After dropping the large bones, the bearded vulture spirals or glides down to inspect them and may repeat the act if the bone is not sufficiently cracked.[9] This learned skill requires extensive practice by immature birds and takes up to seven years to master.[29] Its old name of ossifrage ("bone breaker") relates to this habit. Less frequently, these birds have been observed trying to break bones (usually of a medium size) by hammering them with their bill directly into rocks while perched.

Spot dippers fairly regularly here in Dublin. Although this is on the Dodder, which can get fairly bucolic in certain stretches even though it's essentially in the middle of the city

I've seen kingfishers there once or twice too. Near impossible to photograph with my crappy phone camera though

I've just remembered: when I was searching how to spell Betws-y-Coed earlier, Google asked me if I was looking for 'busty co-ed' so that's nice.

Been quite a bird-shy winter on the whole? Last thing I can remember of note was a tree full of redwings, I assume beginning the long-haul home.

Here's a first: i just saw a hawk resting on the pavement on W110th St. It flew away before i could snap a pic but WOW

GREAT HORNED OWL IS BACK W00T W00T

still just an audio sighting tho

one of these moonful nights i oughtta go on an owl prowl

first time hearing a hummingbird this season, zwooping past the window at dawn, sounding like a little jetsons car

& yesterday saw this dear pair of chickadees excavating themselves a hole in a dead tree where a branch had broken off. dipping their heads in, tippytippytap, flitting to the next branch over to wipe the woodfuzz from their beaks and going back for more. they got it deep enough to fit about halfway in before taking a break, and once the coast was clear a pair of nuthatches swooped in to see if it was worth stealing.

or perhaps i've got it all wrong, maybe the nuthatches contracted the chickadees to chip out a cozy tree hollow and were merely checking on its progress? i do not know enough about the avian economy, or the relations between these two pairs of birds, to definitively say. if i'm in the neighborhood again later & can deduce more i will keep this thread updated (unless i forget).

Today in the park in Brooklyn I saw an American Treecreeper. Not mega rare but I’ve certainly never seen one before - I though it was some kind of extra small extra cute variety of nuthatch but no it’s the only North American member of its family! Stickin it’s head in the bark gaps and blendin in.

I am a huge fan of the general scuttling about on the sides of trees bird group so this was very exciting.

ambushed by unexpected betws-y-coed!

(one of the field centres that made up the network of my late dad's work -- FSC rhyd-y-creuau -- is based very close by)

This hummingbird stops by for baths every morning. pic.twitter.com/oaWm354Cy3

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) May 3, 2023

(all the more odd because of the way modern cameras work)

saw small, white, heron-shaped thing in the thames this morning by hammersmith bridge. book tells me it could be a small egret. egrets, i have a few...

the usual grey wagtail was hopping about too.

The sun rises at 5:30 and sets at 9:30 where I live now, and around 9 PM every night for the last week or so, a very large, extremely horny robin has landed on the fence post directly outside my office window to sing his fuck-me song for a half hour. It's cool, and kind of entertaining, but also sort of annoying. Also, around 4 PM most days, a pair of very large hawks (or possibly eagles) come out and circle slowly over the trees and field behind my building for an hour or so. And there's a gang of crows that live near the Mexican place where I get lunch once a week, and I see them flying from tree to tree. They're gigantic. Montana: these goddamn birds act like they own the place!

i have a 4am bird, a blackbird i think, that seems to think the dawn chorus starts an hour before it starts to get light

Little egrets are doing really well in the UK, with lots of nesting pairs.

Yesterday, I walked off a main road onto a grubby field edge and disturbed a buzzard. It was no more than five feet away and scared the shit out of me as it lifted almost soundlessly into the air. I investigated and found a mangled squirrel it had clearly been feasting on.

There were red kites flocking over a town in wales we were in, turns out a guy was feeding them lamb livers - my sister in law and her kids got to see them swooping down on to his lawn but my wife had just strapped our screaming child into the car so i missed out :(

They other day I saw a bunch of 8-10 corvids (crows and magpies I think) bullying a big bird of prey (probably a buzzard?) - the big chap was clearly trying to get away from them and they were swooping around it and pecking at it and it was quite a thing to see.

at the other end of the scale completely i saw housemartins near putney bridge on sunday. didn't see any digging up mud from the thames this time though, i guess it's a bit late for nest building.

(am seeing fewer magpies in the park at the moment, 1 or 2 rather than the usual 4 or 5. which i'm putting down to them nesting)

Yesterday I was walking through town and sat on a bench for a minute underneath the eaves of a building. There was a barn swallow sitting on a dangling arc of cable, kind of taking one step to the right, one step to the left, but not flying away and kind of keeping one eye on me. He was there long enough that I was able to take a picture of him, which surprised me. But then I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and realized there was a nest at the top of a column about 3 feet away from me, which he was guarding, so I got up and walked away, not wanting to disturb him and his family any further.

man magpies are assholes. there's a couple of them near me who will just NOT leave one of the neighbourhood cats alone. it's just this one cat. I don't know what he did. but he pops his head out and they're down there jawing at him. hopping towards him from two angles at once.

I saw a swift the other day, not sure what kind (black with white patches)... I don't think I've seen one here before, maybe it's migrating or something

I highly recommend the merlin app, which also allows you to identify the calls of birds. I've been having a lot of fun with it, a little endorphin rush when you id a new call you haven't before.

I got bopped in the back of the head by an aggressive red-winged blackbird yesterday. I've seen them swoop at people at the park before, but this is the first time I've had one make contact and draw blood.

the one thing i will say in favor of magpies is that they have a beautiful call

i was visiting my parents in australia recently & man, the sound of early-morning magpies really does it for me

swoopy & kinda scary to me otherwise

They're not a problem here in Tasmania, but a few years back in Canberra I was pinned in terror behind a tree while an aggressive and fast magpie waited for me to come out, after taking a couple of shots at me. I ended up running to the corner store with my arms folded over my head in "perp walk" style. Those guys are lethal.
Also a lot of the beautiful "magpie" calls you hear are actually butcher birds, not dangerous to people (although pitiless to lizards etc.).

beautiful call? they sound like machine guns!

northern hemisphere/european magpies aren't particularly closely related to australian magpies

this is a robin/robin deal

ahh

As I remember them, Australian magpies have an extraordinary range of calls and vocalisations - to the point where they're often kept in cages, iirr? When I was in WA, I remember chatting to a postman who had a cap with eyes drawn on the back, to deter angry magpies. Sheesh.

I know British magpies can be buggers but they do have an extraordinary vocal range of their own. Up close, they can burble, creak, gargle, burble and natter with the best of them.

Before I knew what the hell a Larsen trap* was, I was walking along a field edge and found a caged magpie. I instinctively knew it was transgressive but I let the poor bugger out anyway.

*a big cage in two parts for angry farmers, where you keep a corvid in one half and keep the other half open to lure other territorial corvids and bingo have two birds for the price of one.

there was a program about the Australian artist/poet Frieda Hughes on WS yesterday. She had a magpie friend called George who used to perch on her head while she was painting and play with her dogs. I can't imagine a UK magpie being like that.

I should add that I love magpies when they're not being psychos, I've seen parent birds with youngsters bugging them, fussing back, bickering, they're so personable and funny. And kind of terrifying, if they look you in the eye.

the Iberian Magpie which I saw loads of in Portugal has blue bits instead of white bits, which owns

oh wow

I got bopped in the back of the head by an aggressive red-winged blackbird yesterday. I've seen them swoop at people at the park before, but this is the first time I've had one make contact and draw blood.

Yeah we have some very aggressive red-winged blackbirds around my work, I got swooped at twice yesterday. Not enough to draw blood, but unsettling anyway.

there was a program about the Australian artist/poet Frieda Hughes on WS yesterday. She had a magpie friend called George who used to perch on her head while she was painting and play with her dogs. I can't imagine a UK magpie being like that.

She actually found and raised her magpie in Wales

I didn't pick up on that - was only half listening while doing the washing up. It sounded like she lived somewhere rural and assumed she was still living in Australia. I've heard stories before of people who develop friendships with wild birds and always enjoy this stuff. The closest I've ever got was one particular blackbird last summer that would spend a lot of time near me in the garden and this went on for weeks. But it would scarper to the hedge if I ever tried getting too close.

What happens when a bird decides it's ready to run a weather report on its own

[source, full story: https://t.co/1Mh9rSVlMC]pic.twitter.com/ZC6CxQC1m2

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 9, 2023

couple of weeks ago spotted an empty birds' nest in the parking lot of a nature preserve i frequent in LI.

today was informed that 1) it was an oriole's nest 2) it has since been destroyed by crows, and broken eggshells were found.

spotted an oriole today right by where the nest was, though. also, lots of crows.

Saw a very large owl sitting on the top of a power pole while driving to Target this past Sunday morning. Surprised me because I thought all owls were nocturnal. Then a couple of miles later I saw a hawk or large eagle come in for a landing on another power pole, and when we passed a small creek I saw a duck with a surprising amount of ducklings — eight or nine, it looked like — paddling around in the water.

Modey Lemon - Crows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=augVsAcmEH8

https://i.ibb.co/ygCC7Bt/IMG-20230615-183021721.jpg VERY active tern & piping plover nesting site at Stelhi Beach in Bayville attracted a huge film crew yesterday. or at least i assume they were there for the birds, i have no idea. saw dozens of terns and a few plovers, then a couple more plovers by adjacent preserve at Fox Point. captured some audio & video.

today saw a sparrow flying around inside the supermarket in Manhattan, but wasn't able to get a pic