Look! A bird!

[FishProf]

In other news, our neighborhood watch northern mockingbird is still patrolling our street, as he landed on a neighbor's tree as soon as he saw me come out the front door, and stayed there, noisily making his presence known until I drove off.

Is that a mockingbird?

[apl68]

I was sitting on the bank at the pond at the city park around dawn this morning when I heard an outburst of avian ruckus some distance away.  There seemed to be multiple species involved.  The only one I could make out for sure was a screech owl that suddenly started screeching.  Maybe the others had interrupted it as it was trying to bed down for the day?  Then everything got quiet again.

[Langue_doc]

In other news, our neighborhood watch northern mockingbird is still patrolling our street, as he landed on a neighbor's tree as soon as he saw me come out the front door, and stayed there, noisily making his presence known until I drove off.

Is that a mockingbird?

I once came across a solitary individual mimicking an ambulance so realistically that I waited for the "ambulance" to pass before crossing the street. There was no ambulance, and the sirens seemed to be coming from above, so there he was, perched on a telephone pole, chirping away!

[Thursday's_Child]

There was about 20 minutes of hopping and ruckus from my Tea Olive hedge yesterday afternoon.  Most of the hopping was at least 15 Ruby-crowned Kinglets - I've never seen more than two at once before this!  The ruckus was from a couple of species that I couldn't identify beyond "probably Warbler".  Apparently Tea Olives are excellent places to forage after a flush of blooms, b/c I didn't see anything predatory.

[Langue_doc]

The highlights of yesterday's bird walk were more than 2000 brant swooping down onto the pond, a Wilson's snipe that was barely visible in the dried vegetation he was settled in, an eastern meadowlark, several species of ducks and other waterfowl, a few killdeer, a couple of oystercatchers, two or more northern harriers, a couple of Cooper's hawks, an American kestrel, several species of sparrows, a great blue heron, three or four great egrets, and other assorted birds.

[apl68]

Had several geese sightings while vacationing up north in the Mid-West. 

[Langue_doc]

On the bird walk this morning, we saw a kestrel emerge from its nest--nest was among the nests of a large non-raptor bird colony--, a few red-tailed hawks, a couple of sharp-shinned hawks, and much later into the walk, a sharp-shinned hawk trying to dislodge a kestrel from the top of a structure. Other birds included several sparrow species--chipping, white-throated, song, swamp, fox, and house sparrows. A few red-bellied woodpeckers, a couple of yellow-bellied sapsuckers, a northern flicker, a great blue heron standing knee-deep in water, nonchalanlty eyeing us walking past him, and flocks and flocks of birds including american crows, red-winged blackbirds, robins, and several other species.