Look! A bird!

[mamselle]

Twenty-four geese, two swans and a cat bird this AM.

No herons at all. I think they've migrated, maybe.

M.

[Langue_doc]

The ivory-billed woodpecker is now officially extinct.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/climate/endangered-animals-extinct.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/29/endangered-species-ivory-billed-woodpecker/

[Harlow2]

East coast bird migration is fully under way. When we were at Cape May on Sunday there were 469 kestrels, 15 bald eagles, 144 kestrels, and hawks by the hundred that day alone  Question for birders asked my a younger family member: how do you know you aren't counting the same bird twice? 

[mamselle]

Oddly, I'm still seeing swans (two mature birds, still 'Family A' I think) around; I sort-of thought they'd migrated, at least a bit. (I know they're heavy--especially these two, they're huge now--but they do fly...I suspect ours are annually replenished as they take off from where they've been 'planted' for tourist purposes at a couple of public sights; when they wise up to the wider waterworld options around them, they scoot, and the city has to bring in new birds...)

If the winter isn't too bad, they might do OK by sticking around (and the juvenile heron, likewise; the other birds seem to have left him to fend for himself, and he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to leave; he wasn't out yesterday, but I got several videos of him the day before (and missed two cool fly-offs: he startled me so much I couldn't get the camera up and in place to catch his take-off, squawking to announce his flight plan to Bird Traffic Control, which mostly consists of about three clusters of ducks and a few lone geese tooling about.

I'm also getting mad at whomever is disturbing all the places the ducks like to sleep and forage in: do-gooder bio-phyto-zenophobes seem to think it's their bounden duty to uproot or cut down all the kudzu and so on they can find--thus denuding the ground around the river, taking out the roots that hold the soil in place, and bothering the birds, who have scrammed from all the places they were thronging to earlier this summer.

If they were planting alternative green stuff, I'd have less of a problem with it, but they're not. So the stuff they are trying to eradicate is just going to come back more hardily and handily, the banks of the rivers will get flatter and muddier and more spare, and the ducks, geese, turtles, and other critters (like the stray beaver, haven't seen him since the one sighting a month ago) will go find other, more protected areas (where I won't get to enjoy them--obviously, this is all about me...).

OK, rant over, that's been building, more typing and editing to do, just had to take a bird break and rest my brain for a bit.

M. 

[Puget]

Oddly, I'm still seeing swans (two mature birds, still 'Family A' I think) around; I sort-of thought they'd migrated, at least a bit. (I know they're heavy--especially these two, they're huge now--but they do fly...I suspect ours are annually replenished as they take off from where they've been 'planted' for tourist purposes at a couple of public sights; when they wise up to the wider waterworld options around them, they scoot, and the city has to bring in new birds...)

Mute swans (what we have) don't migrate-- they are non-native, and were introduced from Europe as decorative birds, but now reproduce and live year round in areas of the US including New England. Although pretty, they are environmentally problematic as they can displace native birds.
I'm quite sure bringing in swans is now illegal-- it is all natural reproduction.

Geese in MA likewise generally do not migrate, and you will see them in the winter in large numbers, especially in areas where water is not frozen over.

[mamselle]

Thanks. Interesting. I thought I'd read somewhere that these swans did migrate, so I guess I got that wrong!

If the 60 geese still honking overhead most mornings are any indication, I'd say they are pretty much holding their own (in fact, there is an egg-addling campaign going on since they like to forage in the nearby school athletic fields a lot, and are--angrily, at times, or aggressively--taking over parts of the riverside as well). 

In fact, of the three swan families I was following early in the summer, only this one has consistently appeared in the past month--perhaps the floods wiped the others out, although I was hoping they had just moved on somewhere.

I'm doing more pictures of the ducks as a result. Someone said there were some wood ducks hanging out as well as the mallards, but I haven't seen them yet.

M.

[clean]

Today, while reviewing and replying to these fora, I heard a very loud Bang on my house. I could not determine if it was the front door or the back windows.  I figured I d look out back first, and sure enough, there were feathers still floating about. 

Scanning the back yard, I saw a White Wing Dove (about the size of a small pigeon) in the grass.  I went outside to see if I could help it on its way. I tried to scoop it up and it fluttered frantically and moved a few feet forward.  As the grass is really wet from today's storms, I wasnt going to chase the bird around the soaked yard. 

Ill check later and either put it out of its misery , dispose of the evidence , or cheer its survival!

[mamselle]

Poor bird. I hope it made it.

I keep mentioning the swans, herons, etc. on other threads--notably the weather thread, I guess--for which, apologies.

Still seeing the same two mature swans, "Family A" in my nomenclature, that I've seen since March, and have talked with a couple other afficionadoes who were following all three families and concluded, as I had, that B and C were either in other parts of the (longish) river system, or had been wiped out by one of the two or three major flooding storms we've seen since spring.

There were four herons, all told--a mature pair, a second-yearling, and a yearling; the first three seem to be gone, the yearling is still around--saw and photographed him yesterday, doing the bill-poking-out thing to tease fish up who think it's a water-strider, then, "Gulp! Dinner! Sorry, guys!"

Several ducks, still; about 20 geese but that's 40 fewer (by actual count) than before--they must have gone somewhere....

Also a blue jay seen twice now at the same time each AM methodically going along the same house's front gutter and tossing out twigs, and leaves, probably looking for bugs and doing a bit of housecleaning while he's at it. I got a few snaps of him, leaves in mid-air.

A catbird was within reaching distance, trying out his cardinal, about three days ago; yesterday, too, something swished hard and fast out of a tree overhanding the river, followed by another of its kind--too fast to see, flying flat over the water, then up and out of sight.

Big enough to be a kingfisher, and I've seen and heard one before along there, so that's what I'm calling it unless it introduces itself to me and tells me I'm wrong someday.

M.

[clean]

I am happy to report that the 'house crasher' most likely survived!  I tried to find him/her last night by shining a flashlight   through the window, and didnt see the bird.  This morning, it is clearly gone!  (And no pile of feathers to indicate that it became a 'critter treat' in the night!)

[mamselle]

Good news.

Yes, they sometimes get stunned, then recover and go on.

Glad that's what it looks like here.

I worked at one place that had a breezeway between two buildings; part of one building was a pre-school for the faculty there.

One of their projects each spring was to cut out and color a new bunch of paper birds to tape up on the windows so birds would realize it was a solid and not just open air and try to fly through.

The maintenance crew did such a good job that the glass was particularly transparent, in fact, so it was an ongoing problem.

M.

[Morden]

Yesterday, dozens of magpies gathered to complain about the juvenile bald eagle sitting at the top of our spruce tree. It was fascinating to watch the different magpie personalities (and risk tolerance) as some complained from a safe distance, others did fly-bys, and one brave bird was trying to hover right in the eagle's personal space.

[clean]

BIRD UPDATE...

I mowed the back yard today. 
The prior notice of a happy bird ending, was premature. 

Not that it wasnt a happy ending, but not for the bird.  I found the pile of feathers under a chair in the corner of the yard.  It looks like it was a Very Good Evening for another critter.


So it is a matter of perspective... Some Celebrate Sully Sullenberger for the Miracle on the Hudson, while geese world wide mark the event as The Massacre on the Hudson!

[nebo113]

Red shouldered hawk sat on my fence yesterday, about 6 feet from the side of the house.  I've seen it perch on nearby trees but never this close.  Wonder what it found interesting in my side yard?

[waterboy]

A bald eagle and an osprey, all within 30 minutes. Made my day.

[mamselle]

Geese, swans and ducks, all in one frame.

And beautiful fall tree colors starting up...

M.