Look! A bird!

[nebo113]

Just back for the 50th state, where I  saw, for the first time:  zebra doves, mynah birds, and red crested cardinals (which are not cardinals).  It was not a bird watching expedition and I did not have binocs.

[Thursday's_Child]

Cedar waxwings have arrived, so I've now got a typical contingent of winter birds!

A hermit thrush and a ruby-crowned kinglet are frequently showing up in the hanging feeder.  This isn't what I typically expect from their species, but there've been other times, with other species, where there's one who shows odd-ball behavior.  Maybe that flexibility in foraging behavior will prove adaptive.

[nebo113]

Wood storks galore!  Pushing egrets from their usual nesting/roosting location.

[Thursday's_Child]

Wood storks galore!  Pushing egrets from their usual nesting/roosting location.

Nebo, are you visiting the Everglades?  Regardless, I'm jealous.

This morning I got a really good look at a bird that isn't in the book.  I hate it when this happens.  Bird was feeding - nervously and out-of-sync with the others - on the ground, eating millet and perhaps safflower.  It was large sparrow size and shape (crouched while eating) with a short conical bill without a distinctively different color, overall dark greyish with the top of the head seemingly darker, dark eye, an obviously off-white throat that faded into an apron over the chest, tail and wings slightly darker than body with very faint suggestions of two wingbars.  I couldn't match it to any sparrow or sparrow-like bird - the closest it came was a Brewer's blackbird, but the legs didn't seem long enough, nor did the beak.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[Catherder]

Possibly a junco?

[apl68]

Most mornings I walk to the city park and walk the trail around it before getting ready for work.  The park is centered on a large pond with a three-mile (almost) trail around it.  The trail goes from one of the main roads through town, past picnic shelters, playing fields, and a menagerie of school 4-H livestock, through a stretch of woods, past a subdivision, and back to the road.  It's a great place for wildlife sightings.

Today I saw a large grey heron.  I see at least one of these most days.  There's been an egret around quite a bit lately as well, but not today.

Though I didn't see them, I heard a pair of owls hooting back and forth in the wooded section.  It sounded like they were trying to sing a duet.  Maybe they were trying to locate each other just before settling down for a good day's sleep?

[Thursday's_Child]

Possibly a junco?

I don't think so, unless they have a really dark color-morph that the book doesn't include.  Junco illustrations always show white underparts and white feathers on the outside of the tail, plus a pale beak and this one didn't have those.

[Thursday's_Child]

Mystery solved - a few days after the previous post, much better lighting enabled its identification as a female brown-headed cowbird.

In more recent news, we're having lots of rain again.  This is making numerous mini-lakes that are very popular with the phoebes.  One was closely patrolling the largest lake in my back yard this morning, both picking up morsels while walking along the edges and from the surface while hovering.  The rather larger lake near the post office also had a phoebe.

[mamselle]

This was about ten days ago, but I've been a tiny bit busy...

It was about 10 PM, and very cloudy/dark, as I walked across the bridge near my place. Nothing visible, so I kept going.

After I got about 1/2 block away, I heard a raw-throated "Shrwak!" and the rush of wings that heralds the local blue heron, flying under the bridge (He must have seen the old British film, "Piece of Cake," he does this a lot. His wingspan just about reaches the bridge's arches).

I turned around and got several very grainy pictures of him, silvery-shadowy in the dark, doing his ploppy-footed walk in the icy water.

Their legs must be nerveless, it was freezing out but he seemed unfazed.

M.

[nebo113]

This was about ten days ago, but I've been a tiny bit busy...

It was about 10 PM, and very cloudy/dark, as I walked across the bridge near my place. Nothing visible, so I kept going.

After I got about 1/2 block away, I heard a raw-throated "Shrwak!" and the rush of wings that heralds the local blue heron, flying under the bridge (He must have seen the old British film, "Piece of Cake," he does this a lot. His wingspan just about reaches the bridge's arches).

I turned around and got several very grainy pictures of him, silvery-shadowy in the dark, doing his ploppy-footed walk in the icy water.

Their legs must be nerveless, it was freezing out but he seemed unfazed.

M.

Oh my.  Big blues are awesome.

[apl68]

This was about ten days ago, but I've been a tiny bit busy...

It was about 10 PM, and very cloudy/dark, as I walked across the bridge near my place. Nothing visible, so I kept going.

After I got about 1/2 block away, I heard a raw-throated "Shrwak!" and the rush of wings that heralds the local blue heron, flying under the bridge (He must have seen the old British film, "Piece of Cake," he does this a lot. His wingspan just about reaches the bridge's arches).

I turned around and got several very grainy pictures of him, silvery-shadowy in the dark, doing his ploppy-footed walk in the icy water.

Their legs must be nerveless, it was freezing out but he seemed unfazed.

M.

Oh my.  Big blues are awesome.

Several days ago I got within a few yards of one of our local herons before it flew.  It's amazing how they seem almost to levitate with a few slow beats of those huge wings.

[Catherder]

There are several pairs of great  blues in my neighbourhood but I've taken against them since I watched them staking out a nest of baby otters and pulling a mole out of its hole.  They are cowards (I chased them away from the otters just by banging on my window) and mean hunters.

[nebo113]

There are several pairs of great  blues in my neighbourhood but I've taken against them since I watched them staking out a nest of baby otters and pulling a mole out of its hole.  They are cowards (I chased them away from the otters just by banging on my window) and mean hunters.

Seeing that would have been something!!  Lucky you!

[apl68]

Saw another great grey heron take-off.  As a bonus, there was a large egret visible in the background at the same time, just across the pond.

[apl68]

Spent much of New Year's Day hiking at a state park.  Part of the trail ran along a rise overlooking a lake that hosts a lot of migratory waterfowl.  You get better views of them from the trail on the levee across the lake, but I did see several wood ducks swimming around down below on the side I was on.  I saw as many as five at a time at once through my binoculars.  There were at least seven or eight all together.  It's hard to count wood ducks, since they keep submerging and surfacing and disappearing behind stumps and such.