Look! A bird!

[nebo113]

My birding goal for this summer:  learn to distinguish between downies and hairies!!!  Yes, I know the textbook distinction so now want to put it into practice in the real world....my back porch.

[Thursday's_Child]

A first spring male Indigo bunting has been hanging around.  He's in the middle of molting from drab brown into blue & is the blotchiest bird around - small patches of both colors, scattered over bird as individual feathers are replaced!

[Langue_doc]

Saw a few pairs of Bonaparte's gulls--the remarkable part was that I was able to identify them. I saw one a few days ago, on one of the main drags in my neighborhood, perched on a lamppost above my car, and all I could think of was "gull, don't pxxp on my car". There were the usual herring gulls too, but now I can tell the first-year gulls from the third-year ones, and the adults. Identifying the second-year gulls still needs some work.

There were several flocks of brant too--thought that they would have flown north much earlier.

[Juvenal]

Who marks a handful of days as," Now let's move on to the next milestone," and listens for the sound of the returning Common Oriole?  Here (NY Metro), it's about the end of the first week in May.

[Langue_doc]

Saw a small flock of killdeer strutting around on a playing field in a park by the shoreline earlier this week. I didn't recognize them at first other than assuming that they were shorebirds because of their legs, so had to look them up in my bird book after getting home. In other bird news, saw a small bird chase a cooper's hawk in the same park. Earlier, in the same park, a group of birds (couldn't identify them other than their black color) were chasing a red-tailed hawk.

On my way home, when making a left turn, saw a mockingbird chasing a larger bird, probably a red-winged blackbird. The mockingbird then proclaimed his victory by strutting around in flight and landing on a chimney top.

[mamselle]

My guess would be crows chasing the hawk.

I've seen them gang up on a hawk or an owl, yelling bloody murder (yes) and then taking off after the offending bird, pecking at it and flapping their wings in front of it while all involved were in flight.

They really HATE big birds (and what they do to their chicks).

M.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

We took a walk around the neighborhood and saw a red-shouldered hawk sitting in the low branch of a tree. Apparently some cardinals, and other birds, were very unhappy to see it.

[Langue_doc]

Went on a bird walk this morning--these walks usually start at the crack of dawn, but the advantage is having a knowledgeable birder identity birds for you.

In addition to the usual blue jays, cardinals, starlings, robins (including a robin on a nest), grackles, red-winged blackbirds, warblers that I couldn't identify, and assorted sparrows, we saw three or four great egrets overhead at different locations and stages of the walk.
Downy woodpeckers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, and yellow-shafted northern flickers.
Three brown-headed cowbirds, a male and two females
Chimney swifts flying overhead
A couple of crows, couldn't tell if they were fish crows or the regular American crows.
A gloriously red scarlet tanager, later joined by a comrade.
Over a hundred or so each of the black and white warblers and the yellow-rumped warblers.
A few hermit thrushes, an ovenbird, and other birds feeding on the ground.
Prairie warblers, northern parulas, Baltimore orioles (the first ones for me this season), cedar waxwings, ruby-crowned kinglets.
New to me: a few blackburnian warblers and black-throated green warblers
Other warblers: didn't write them down, but will see the entire list when the organizer sends out the bird list for this walk.

On the way home, as I was sitting on a bench overlooking one of the ponds, a downy kept flying back and forth among the branches of the tree in front of me. I was quite pleased with myself at recognizing this as a female.

The walk was in the northern parts of Central Park.

As for the birds chasing the red-tailed hawk in my posting above, these were most definitely not crows, but most likely grackles or red-winged blackbirds.

[cathwen]

What a fabulous collection of bird sightings, Langue_doc! 

People who don't live there don't realize how rich Manhattan is in bird life—all they see is cars and concrete.  When I lived there, I belonged to a birding group in Battery Park City.  I was always amazed at the variety of birds we would see on our walks. 

[Langue_doc]

As far as birds are concerned, NYC is one of the service plazas along the bird interstate.

Battery Park has free bird walks this month (and probably early next month as well). I'm looking forward to the end of the semester to go on a couple. Bryant Park also has free bird walks in the evening hours during migration. Given the size of both parks, especially the latter, it's surprising to see such a variety and such large numbers.

[apl68]

I spent last week vacationing up north.  I saw gulls at the Great Lakes, and geese almost everywhere I went.  I think every motel I stayed at had at least a couple of geese stopping over on any green space they could find nearby.  Even if there were no bodies of water nearby.  Who knew that geese liked to stop over near motels on their way north in the spring?

[Parasaurolophus]

Just saw a bald eagle and a crow... racing?... along the highway. It didn't look like the eagle was being chased off or anything, and they were mostly parallel.

[ohnoes]

There are a ton of Canada geese nesting near my home.  I saw the first batch of fuzzy goslings today.

[nebo113]

Baby titmouse on bird feeder.  Fuzzy tuft.  Chirping madly.  Looking nervous....of course, most birds tend to look that way when feeding.

[Thursday's_Child]

Barred owl yesterday morning, in broad daylight, swooped down & landed on the vertical trunk of a pine, then spent several minutes surveying the yard.  Of course, I didn't have a camera handy!