I found a baby mockingbird on the hill by my house. Thought it had fallen, I just wanted to move it out of the sun and into a nearby bush. Noticed it had blood in its mouth, lifted up the left wing and it had a gaping chest wound. I could see its little lungs inflating. I put it out of its misery; I think I'm scarred for life.
Another good birding related article on CNN. At least something good came out of that Amy Cooper incident. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/b...-in-stem-christian-cooper-scn-trnd/index.html
American Goldfinches love nyjer seed. Bought a sock of it once from home depot and hung it on a branch hoping to get 1 bird. Within a week I had 6.
Just had my first (observed at least) visit by a yellow hammer to my feeders. Such an awesome bird, though I’m admittedly biased.
I have 3 suet feeders - one in my front yard and two in my back yard. It’s absurd how defensive the catbirds are of the one in the front yard but will happily share the two out back.
I’ve never heard a single person outside of Alabama refer to them as that, but it’s such a cool name. There’s a passerine species in the bunting family in Europe that’s also called a yellowhammer.
https://act.audubon.org/onlineactio...web-website_nas-topmenubar-20200600_mbta_deis Everyone filled this out? Just a mention in case you haven't seen it.
Just took two white terns and a nene to the airport. Sorry no pics ‘cause they were boxed up for transport. I started volunteering two years ago for a bird sanctuary whose mission is to rehabilitate and repopulate injured native species. It’s pretty fun and I highly recommend helping out any similar organizations in your area.
Definitely red bellied. I always mix it up, I think males have the full red mohawk, and the females just have it on the top of their head.
I'm a newly minted birder and have only done it across 3 days total and I feel like I fortunate/have a varied blend of birds, instead of just the same 2-3 species coming by. Everything for me is from black oil sunflower, but I might be branching out. I gotta decide if I'm going to spend any money on this hobby (new feeders/excotic food/etc).
Having bird feeders outside of my windows makes quarantine infinitely better. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get set up, but seed can run up, especially if you have squirrels. If you add anything, I’d do a suet/seed cake or peanut feeder. If you have a lot of goldfinches and house finches, a thistle/nyjer sock would be great too.
I wouldn't bother with exotic seeds. More feeders is good. Get some millet to throw on the ground, some suet feeders.
This is disgusting. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politi...Am6_xd2g1MeqlQVtmZWJSOEtwjezSGnw67b3AN_A4k3hk
welp, was meandering through HD while on a lenghty phone call, happened to walk by the bird section and low and behold, a sock of nyjer seed...for $4.49. I figured it would be either or both of 1) expensive and 2) specialty/hard to find. Impulse buy right there. Also picked up a suet cake and hoslter. About $10 all in. Lets GOOO Also found a mis priced Nest Outdoor camera at HD. I don't have the electrical outlet yet for the side of the house its going to go on, so I cannot install yet. Until that happens,I put it temporarily right next to the bird feeders - and will figure out a bit more of their patterns/timing w/r/t visiting the feeders. To date, it seems like the cardinals never stop eating. I don't know about y'all but I've seen foxes stalk my feeders. Would be cool to see the interspecies activity play out. I wonder if I catch anything really metal.
Phainopepla showed up again this morning around the same time, took a quick swig, a bath, and bounced. I got a shitty picture, hope to get a better one. It's unusual because Phainopepla are a desert dwelling bird that is very rarely ever seen drinking water. I know I've never seen it before. "These desert birds are adapted to their dry environment. They rarely drink water and instead get their water from the juicy berries they consume." https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/3ef2e66d89fc4e56866d911b945b94d7
Good call, not like a thrasher's at all. Actually looks similar to the finch above. Are these male and female? And separately, how best to incorporate beak into search when say, using Cornell's search bar? So far, I've reverse engineered the search by looking up the "attracts these species" list printed on my food bag, but that is a very narrow strategy.
I tried the app, but for my region it needed to download a massive file that at the time would have taken days to download for me in BFE. So I just stick to using the Web ID help for now and a field guide if it's handy.
Not sure about the Cornell search bar. Yes that is a female House Finch. My next line of thinking when I ID birds, is that I know it's a finch, I try and recall what I've seen at my feeders. Since I've seen House Finches there before, check to see what the female House Finch looks like and go from there. Could also be an immature male, looks like there is a slight bit of red on it's breast, but I don't know their breeding cycle.