Look! A bird!

[Langue_doc]

I had a good look at sparrows when they gathered around me to prospect for crumbs as I was eating a snack. I looked up their identities after I got home (I didn't have a camera with me). One of the group, very attractive, was a male house sparrow just taking on its breeding plumage. The others were, I think, non-breeding/immature males, but I didn't think to check the bill color. Sparrows are so omnipresent where I live (and zip about so rapidly) that it never occurred to me to try and distinguish among them before.

Depending on where you live, some of these could be song sparrows or even their white-throated counterparts.

Saw a whole bunch of Eastern Wood-Peewees yesterday, flying to and from the tops of branches of trees along a body of water. The belted kingfisher was back, sitting on the edge of one of the bodies of water, on which were a pair of American black ducks.

[FishProf]

I visited the Vermont Institute of Natural Science while up for the eclipse.  Spectacular up-close views of rehab raptors.  And crows.  Which were taunting the owl in the enclosure next door.  Ya know, like crows do.

[Langue_doc]

After seeing the eclipse, I meandered down to the places where the waterfowl tend to hang out, and just as I got to the first spot, a great blue heron flew down, landed on a grassy incline no more than 10 feet away, and then made its way down to the path, and then to the shoreline about three more feet away. The sight of a human didn't faze him in the least. I then went to another body of water, and was directed to the two killdeer along the muddy shoreline by a fellow birder. A couple of days earlier, I saw an egret fly back and forth across the water where the heron landed. Another heron yesterday, in another pond.

[FishProf]

The streak of rain on Ornithology Lab day continues.

My students are starting to suspect that Birds Aren't Real.

[Langue_doc]

Went birding on a very windy morning--winds must have been between 40-50 mph throughout the walk. In addition to the newly arrived warblers--pine, palm, yellow-rumped, we saw several blue-gray gnatcatchers, easily spotted because of their blue color, a brown thrasher, a green heron, a couple of turkey vultures, a kestrel, a falcon, two ospreys circling over water, most likely looking for food when they were chased off by a red-tailed hawk, more red-tailed hawks, and several good views of a blue grosbeak. He didn't have intense blue coloring of adult males, but was beginning to take on the blue (according to the expert birders in the group).

[apl68]

The blue jays that hang around my backyard each spring are back.  They've been quite visible in recent days when I sit on the patio with a book.  Saturday they and other birds had good foraging in the yard after it was mowed.

One evening last week I saw a cat over by the fence that might have been scoping them out.  It moved on when the neighbors' dogs began barking.  I suspect that if the cat ever tried assaulting one of those jays, it would be sorry it tried.