MORE BIRDS

[worth1]

Left fork about 3 feet up?

[Ken4230]

There are a few larger birds that frequent the neighbourhood but fewer than used to be due to cutting of forests and building more houses.
The Orange Shafted Flicker.


The Pileated woodpecker also comes for the suet I put out in the cold of winter. Saw none in the yard this year.

Out in the woods.




I think this is a youngster, a barred owl. Such yellow eyes!




Looking at Roland the Chihuahua.


One day I spied some feathers about 20 ft downhill into a ravine on a construction I have wondered about. It looks like it may have been a bridge over the ravine and stream at one time. So, of course, down I go.


The feathers are at the bottom of the pic. Someone suggested this may have been a mountain biking structure.


Those were Barred Owl feathers. A 1st Nations person thanked me for the gift of a few of the few I took.

Out on the estuary at high tide in winter.

And low tide


Young eagles at a distance.

Another youngster watches the river.


One winter's day while walking along a river bank we smelled awful rotting smells with nothing in sight to cause such a stink until we looked up into the trees where we could see discarded leftovers from eagle dinners. The salmon were running up river to spawn.

Kinda grisly.

This one was up a tree in the park one day, like a sitting duck for the camera!

Eating a crow, I think. Sometimes eagle eyes are blue, sometimes yellow. Is it an age thing?

At the beach one day I was a little upset when a couple of people started walking toward this eagle on the beach. It flew up, they tossed it a whole salmon and walked away. Wonderful! I think maybe a released rescue.


Otherwise, watching eagles and owls is usually, well, boring! All they do is sit and blink. I do like looking up from the garden to see eagles circling overhead, sometimes as many as seven. There is an eagle tree nearby. They are protected here and not allowed to be cut down.
If I really wanted to see a lot of eagles I would go to a big fish run where they do annual eagle counts or to the dump where eagles catch seagulls and tear out their hearts to eat leaving the rest of the body behind.

First I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for these absolutely glorious pictures. We live on Kentucky Lake and are surrounded by TVA forest. Am an avid birder, get up at daylight every morning, take a stroll through the garden and then sit and drink coffee and watch the birds for a couple of hours.

we have an abundance of Bald Eagles, Peregrine Falcons, various Hawks and Crows. Also ducks and cormorants by the thousands. The Owls are not as thick as they used to be. Very seldom now do I hear their familiar cry at dusk. Have a farm in Livingston Co. that we hunt on, where I have put up a dozen or so Owl Boxes. I'm kind of new here, didn't realize there would be anything about birds on here. Think I have found a home on here, will take me all day to read and study the pictures.

[karstopography]

Left fork about 3 feet up?

Just a few inches below the fork at 4 o’clock.

[worth1]

I see it.

[Ken4230]

We don't usually have so many sounds at night. That's why we recorded it! Usually it's just quiet with maybe some crickets chirping or cows mooing (potentially hysterically). Rarely, you might hear coyotes. Roosters crowing at night isn't unheard of. The great horned owls only stuck around audibly that year, pretty much; they might have been around before. The toads sang a lot for a number of nights that year and I think a little the next year, but I had never heard them do it before then in such large numbers. The dog barking is pretty normal, though! We used to have a bunch of barn owls in the neighborhood for a couple years, which would make occasional sounds.

It sounds like a jungle here in Western Kentucky at night. Frogs in the water garden, deer snorting, coyotes are thick here, geese on the lake and an occasional owl hooting plus a bunch of other sounds that I am not sure I can identify correctly. Occasionally we will disturb a bird nesting on the front porch or elsewhere when I wander too much at night. Takes a while for them to settle down, invariably they disturb others as they try to find a new roosting spot.

I don't use a light at night, ruins your night vision and takes at least 20 minutes to get it back. I enjoy the dark and Brenda is just the opposite, she likes every light in house on.

[Ken4230]

We have doves outside, now, and various unknown kinds of tweeting birds. Birds have seemed kind of scarce, this growing season.

Merlin a downloadable birding app can help identify birds just by sounds.

But beware, it is addictive.

[Ken4230]

The motley ducks are miscovy ducks.
Spelling is way off.
Great eating and practically invasive.

We kept a flock of Muscovy's for my hunting customers who didn't kill any ducks. we would dress several and give to them free to take home. Never asked, but I am sure that they represented them as wild ducks. It was good business and a cheap way to keep customers satisfied and coming back.

[Seven Bends]

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Hard to see, but there is a Black-and-White Warbler on that live oak trunk, feeding in a characteristically B&W warbler way. Definitely not nuthatch or creeper, I know what those look like. Anyway, surprised to see one here in July. We aren’t in the maps I’ve seen for breeding range or do these warblers migrate especially early?

We are in the winter/nonbreeding range for this species.

Very cool! I don't see many warblers.

Do you know about eBird Hotspots? https://ebird.org/hotspots?hs=L128991
Hopefully that gets you a map of the Houston area as a starting point, and you can adjust as needed. You could check the recent birding lists at the hotspots nearest you to see if anyone else has reported a black and white warbler.

A Houston Audubon Society write-up of black and white warblers says: Black-and-white Warblers are very early fall migrants and have been observed on the coast as early as the last week of June. By mid July they are very common. Occasionally overwinters. This is perhaps the only warbler that can be observed near the coast every month of the year. https://houstonaudubon.org/birding/gall ... rbler.html

[Ken4230]

The 1st time I saw a heron was from a 10th floor apartment window in Vancouver as it flew by. I didn't know what it was right away. It looked like a Pterodactyl.

We have a small oxbow lake in the Barlow Bottoms. We have a Blue Heron rookery on the back side of the lake. They are very territorial and chase interlopers out, when they reach the boundary of their territory they quit chasing. Do not be directly under them when they are surprised or you will regret it. I have had to strip down and take a bath in the lake (hot or cold) to get the smell and everything else off me.

We also have a pair of nesting Bald Eagles, when they eat you can hear the chunks of fish falling through the Cyprus trees. They have no table manners, although they are cleaner than the Blue Herons.

[SpookyShoe]

I drive by this house many mornings on the way back from getting Starbuck's. I think the people put feed out for the ducks. They (the ducks) live at the lake across the street. Looks like a couple of male mallards and several females.

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[karstopography]

IMG_4648.jpeg

Hard to see, but there is a Black-and-White Warbler on that live oak trunk, feeding in a characteristically B&W warbler way. Definitely not nuthatch or creeper, I know what those look like. Anyway, surprised to see one here in July. We aren’t in the maps I’ve seen for breeding range or do these warblers migrate especially early?

We are in the winter/nonbreeding range for this species.

Very cool! I don't see many warblers.

Do you know about eBird Hotspots? https://ebird.org/hotspots?hs=L128991
Hopefully that gets you a map of the Houston area as a starting point, and you can adjust as needed. You could check the recent birding lists at the hotspots nearest you to see if anyone else has reported a black and white warbler.

A Houston Audubon Society write-up of black and white warblers says: Black-and-white Warblers are very early fall migrants and have been observed on the coast as early as the last week of June. By mid July they are very common. Occasionally overwinters. This is perhaps the only warbler that can be observed near the coast every month of the year. https://houstonaudubon.org/birding/gall ... rbler.html

I kind of thought of warblers here as either migrants or winter visitors. We get a big fall and spring migration of many different species of warblers and then ones that tend to hang around all winter.

Northern Parulas are breeding residents I do believe. I hear them more than I see them. I believe so are Prothonotary warblers, but those are uncommon here. Seeing a warbler in July is exciting.

[SpookyShoe]

Lots of ducks in the street as I was on the way home from getting my morning Pumpkin Spice latte.

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[karstopography]

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Northern Waterthrush smashed into the window right after sundown. Hopefully, it will revive. Migrant here according to the Cornell site.

[bower]

What a beauty, karstopography.... I just love the detail on the smaller birds, which are so furtive I can never seem to get a pic.
I believe the survival rate from window bumps is pretty good. They just need time to get over it.

[Paulf]

Thanks for all the stunning photographs. One of my main jobs around the estate is to feed birds. There are so many I would love to see here, but we do have a nice core that keeps me busy. My photographic skills and equipment is fairly minimal but I love seeing what others see in their areas.

As a side note, every summer we have a good number of Ruby Throated hummingbirds visiting the four feeders...this summer they showed up and then left. Last week we had six hummers back in the yard. Our summer resident Red Headed Woodpeckers, usually around six, were here for a couple of weeks and then they were gone and have not been back. Here's hoping they found another food source and are OK.

This all reminds me that my bird food supply is dwindling. Again thanks!

[karstopography]

I started thinking about getting a decent camera with a telephoto lens to try to capture some better images of birds, but golly, these DSLR cameras aren’t exactly inexpensive. Don’t believe I’m wanting it bad enough to sink the money into one of these cameras.

Until recently, I didn’t realize so many of these birds migrate south this early in the year. A guess a lot of the northern song birds are already south of us on their way to tropical places.

[bower]

Getting a new camera is definitely on my list of wants, but so far it's been bumped in favor of other needs. Maybe next year, probably.

Speaking of woodpeckers, I was horrified to learn that the Flicker who managed to make a lovely hole in my eave in spite of endless banging on the window to spook him off, is actually a builder/landlord. I discovered that last year, when he started showing the hole to some starlings, but managed to block it so they didn't nest... this year however, they got past the defenses and had a brood of chicks in the hole that this woodpecker sublet to them. Seriously, the flicker would come around to push off the grate I propped over it and let them get in.
Starlings are a bird I do not love at all. Yes I let them stay once I realized that chicks had hatched up there. The parents crapped all over the wall. And they're noisy and saucy. Also making a point to fly around the house to crap on my car parked on the other side.
Luckily we had a nasty little heat wave near the end of June, and that convinced them not to nest there for a second brood. Just too hot, no AC, crappy Flicker landlord....
The hole finally got boarded over last weekend thanks to intrepid and most helpful installer of security cameras who was up on a ladder there and offered to do the deed. And yet, for two mornings running now, the Flicker is back and drumming on my chimney pot at daylight, and at least one morning I heard pecking again and had to run him off. Not even making his own nest site, just a darn rental!!