Growing Coastal wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 1:11 pm 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.

worth1 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 12:23 pm Left fork about 3 feet up?

Shule wrote: ↑Sat Aug 01, 2020 3:15 am 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.

Shule wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 7:36 pm We have doves outside, now, and various unknown kinds of tweeting birds. Birds have seemed kind of scarce, this growing season.

worth1 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 3:34 pm The motley ducks are miscovy ducks.
Spelling is way off.
Great eating and practically invasive.

karstopography wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 11:55 am 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.

Growing Coastal wrote: ↑Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:05 pm 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.

Seven Bends wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 4:39 pm

karstopography wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 11:55 am 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