Birders Unite

[Baron Doune]

Lot's of finches here...yellow ones.  We feed Niger seed.

300 mph...darting and such.

[CapnFayeCutler]

Ooh yay the birder thread's back!

I saw a bald eagle fly overhead this morning. I just stood there looking up as it glided overhead. I didn't know that they were around the area I live in now (central KY), so that was a great surprise while at work!

[Escarlata]

I think we must have ended up with two clutches of cardinals this year. All of a sudden I've got another scraggly looking adolescent male out here being sassy. By the way, who knew that a group of cardinals can be called a "college", "conclave", "deck", "radiance", or "Vatican" of cardinals? Not so radiant right now, more like a bunch of teenagers, so I'm going to call mine a college of cardinals.

Baron, I don't know if cardinals migrate or not, but I know One-Leg does not, he's been here a couple of years.

Tremayne, blackbirds and grackles are pretty much called the same thing here in Central Florida, though they are not the same bird. The grackle is usually thinner and has a brownish colored breast. The cowbird we had was black with a brown head. I never did see more than one at a time, but they say that the male and female look just alike so I may have been seeing both and not realized it.

We occasionally get the tiny gnatcatchers and I've even seen a pair of great crested flycatchers once.

Right now I am watching about 20 birds of various breeds through the office window, all playing in my tangerine tree and around the feeder pole. Thanks to the PTB for Leinad who did all the designing and measuring for the pole and to my ex for building it for us.

[Lady Neysa]

Ah, one of my favorite pastimes is sitting on my back deck and watching the birds in the morning and evening. We get tons of robins, purple martins,mockingbirds, red wing blackbirds, and probably a bunch of others I can't identify. 
We have some mourning doves nesting nearby too, I hear them every morning and evening.  Every night right around the same time I see a blue heron fly overhead, I've nicknamed it Orville.  We had to cut down this overgrown shrub-trying-to-be-a-tree-like thing because it was overgrown with wild rose thorns.  Ever since we cut it down all my cardinals have disappeared. 
I love listening to the wide range of calls the mockingbirds can make. I used to wonder where on earth all those birds were I was hearing until I realized it was all coming from one bird!  I hate their "cat alarm call" though-drives me nuts! 
I recently cleaned and refilled my hummingbird feeder as I hadn't seen one yet this year. It wasn't 2 minutes after hanging it back up that one appeared!
In the evenings this time of year we'll occasionally hear owls hooting off in the distance. Once last summer we heard several of them calling back and forth to each other. 
The one bird I desperately miss is the Whip-por-will.  They seem to have disappeared from this area of Maryland.  We used to hear them all the time when I was a child, but I haven't heard one in many years.  I would so love to hear one again. I'd even be willing to drive  if anyone knew of a place close by where they could be heard every evening.

[Tremayne]

One spring a couple of years ago when I was up in TN, a mockingbird let off such a bizarre series of sounds I wondered, "where the heck did you winter over, buddy?!" Truly, I swear it was making monkey calls. 

[Lord Finger]

Yesterday, at Green Lakes Sate Park (<10 miles E of Syracuse), I had the fortune of spying a Pileated Woodpecker. I'd never seen one in person before and it really made my day.

[Escarlata]

Most of our finches are the orangy colored house finches, though I have seen one pair of the yellows.

SS, we have at least one pileated around here, I hear his call and the knocking as he searches for bugs. Occasionally I'll catch a glimpse of him though usually just in time for him to take wing and fly away.

Our feeder is a six foot pole with a 2' square platform on top and rods coming out of each corner. We have a hummingbird feeder (bottle with large donut on bottom which has holes for feeding in it) on one rod, a smaller feeder designed for tiny birds (finch,  chicadee, titmouse) with no-waste seed on a second, a suet cage almost buried in the tangerine tree on the third, and on the platform is a large cedar feeding station with troughs on either side and a suet cage on the end facing the office window. We sit the large station angled on the platform, leaving a landing pad. That's mainly for One-leg, the old cardinal male, as he's not real steady.

Two things happened at the feeding stations today that amused me. The first was when I looked out to find the adolescent cardinals trying their chances at the hummingbird and finch feeders. A female was sitting on the donut of the hummingbird feeder trying to get her beak in to the nectar openings. One of the scraggly males was holding on to the finch feeder for dear life, almost upside down and trying to get up high enough to get his beak to the food openings.

The second thing happened following an afternoon thunderstorm. The platform was still wet and an adolescent bluejay landed on it to feed. He didn't hook a toenail into the wood of the feeder and as he ate, his feet kept sliding. At one point it looked like he was dancing as he tried to gain a steady footing. He finally took off and came back in. That time he must have gotten one toenail hooked because only one leg was sliding out from under him.

I am eternally thankful for the birds, they amuse me to no end.

[Lady L]

My son and I heard a pileated Thurs. evening, as we sat on our patio! Hope to actually see it one of these days.
I haven't seen or heard the baby screech owls yet. They should be flying soon. Mama owl makes puppy whining sounds, as she tries to coax them to fly. I did get a really good look at her, one day, as she was poking her head out of the box. She was looking at me, then to the side, then down, so I could see she is definitely the rust variation, not the gray.

[Lady Neysa]

I can't believe it!!  In my previous post I lamented about not hearing any Whipporwills around here anymore.  Well, tonight we were driving my daughter's friend home around 9:30.  He lives on a heavily wooded rural road.  I offhandedly asked him if they ever hear any whipporwills at their house. He responds with: "what, you like those birds?" "They drive me crazy! I can never get any sleep, they keep me up!"  I thought to myself, "Nah, he's gotta be talking about some other bird, all the birders say there are hardly any left around here." We pull into the driveway, turn off the car, and lo and behold, off in the woods- there's that haunting sound I haven't heard in years and years-well I'll be darned...Just 15 minutes from my house.  Who knew?  I know where I'm gonna be taking a lot of summer evening drives now!  That really made my night!

[Lady L]

This evening, mama screech owl was trying to coax one of the baby owls out of the box, to fly. She sat on a branch in the birch tree, a few feet away. The baby poked his small, fuzzy head out of the hole, but did not venture any further. Awwww.

[Tremayne]

A woodpecker came a-knocking at my house yesterday. First time in this house. Nice to know they're around--not so nice to think they hear something edible in my home construction.

[Lady Neysa]

When we were on WA state's Olympic Peninsula a few weeks ago, we were thrilled to see lots of Bald Eagles. Even though they aren't endangered anymore, and there are some here in Maryland, this is the the first time I've seen that many at one time.  We were at the beach in the LaPush reservation, beautiful sea stacks rising dramatically up out of the Pacific, and there were 4 bald eagles circling overhead.  One of them must have been cleaning out a nest, cause it flew towards the sea with what looked like a fish skeleton in it's talons.  The scene was simply breathtaking! 
At my in law's house we saw a quail on the neighbors roof. It's sort of the neighborhood pet.  They tell us that eagles and hawks are so numerous out there that you can't leave small pets outdoors unattended.  Yikes!

[Morgan Dreadlocke]

Question fer you bird feedin' people- Will the big 20 lb sacks of assorted seed grow if cultivated in a field or planter?

The baby Quail are out and about. They look like small grey cotton balls on short legs.

[Lady L]

I have tried planting millet, which is what a lot of the bird seed is. Yes, it grew just fine, looked just like weeds though. The sunflower seeds will definitely grow.

[Escarlata]

We had our first hummingbird here this week. Now I have to go buy more food for the little bugger *frowning* and find a new location for the feeder. I can't see it when I'm at the computer.