We have the tropical storm over us today, soon to be what appears to be the worst of it. In any event the most birds I’ve ever seen at the feeders. Three feeders, between the ground and tree there are easily 50+ birds right now. The one by our bedroom window has at least 30.
Hard to tell honestly, they are all wet. Between my windows being wet, the birds shaking and it being darker nothing distinguishable. Morning doves are fucking hilarious, they are scared of fucking everything. Finches absolutely bossing them on the one feeder.
We get two or 2 morning doves every day at our feeders along with a couple pigeons. I never saw pigeons outside of like a downtown area, but I didn't start paying attention to birds till I turned into an old man. We also get a woodpecker pretty regularly. Man fuck that guy.
I'll have to start paying more attention to our visitors. I know we get a lot of finches and cardinals and have had a few bluejays hang out pretty regularly. I did not know how mean bluejays can be.
Here I'm ok with him. But I used to stay with a friend for awhile who had an all wood house in some woods. They were insanely annoying and damaging his house. Scarred me for life lol. But yea this one doesn't bother me really, it's a rental house and its all brick. Now if he started living in the attic like that damn squirrel did forever that would be a different story lol.
Fwiw, if woodpeckers are damaging your house it’s because there are ants or carpenter bees in the wood/the wood is rotting. Unless it’s an acorn woodpecker which just wants to stash its acorns wherever it can. We don’t have them out east, but check them out. Awesome birds.
Lol doesn’t cause damage but our neighbors behind us told us they have a Pileated that is obsessed with their front porch column. They said it’s loud as fuck and insanely annoying. It’s also not wood, but looks like it. If you walk by their house certain times of the day you think someone is tapping on a window or something to try to get your attention. There’s something not right with that guy.
Got a most likely shitty picture of an Acorn today, I'll check it out in a little bit. It has a weird call. Also, I think I saw a couple Cassin's Kingbirds which would be unusual.
Male Nuttal's. Acorn These are the Kingbirds. 2 different ones that sounded like Cassin's, but I'm not confident enough to ID off calls. Hard to tell the difference between them and Westerns.
Red bellied Woodpeckers used to drill on the metal flashing on the neighbors house. Loud as fuck. I don't think my parents get them to come to the feeders anymore. Probably too much development I guess
Hey guys. This guy flew into the penguin enclosure at the zoo and even the guy taking tickets didn't know what it was. Sorry for the bad pics but by the time I got my phone put he flew up into the trees.
St Louis. It almost looked like a type of penguin until it stood up and you could see its skinny legs. Then of course it flew lol.
My guess is a Black-crowned Night-Heron. Immature if he's got yellow on the bill? Or is the yellow bottom still on the adults?
Lots of activity on the deck this morning. Lesser Goldfinches Desert Cottontail stealing seed with a California Thrasher Female Anna's drank and took a bath.
Also, when I saw this thing perched in the distance the other day, I thought it was a raptor of some kind. Spoiler
The partially leucistic scrub jay is back and grown up. There shouldn't be any white on those wings, not so sure about the white spots on the face. Also got a good shot of an Allen's sticking its tongue out.
It’s not a great pic because I took it with my phone and wasn’t expecting to see this young hawk on a relatively low branch:
Saw a Band-Tailed Pigeon earlier, those are fully grown Mourning Doves to the side of it for reference. It's heavier than a Cooper's Hawk. Absolute unit. Another shot of the Cooper's Hawk when he saw me.
Yeah mourning doves are not small birds IMO. A few weeks ago I posted because I thought it was funny that they were getting bossed by some finches here.
Saw a male Black-Headed Grosbeak. It's really hard to get a good shot of a gorget. The Allen's is supposed to look copper/orange, but the light made this one's look yellow.
Saw a pileated woodpecker flying directly overhead a few days ago. Couldn't see colors but the shape was so unique compared to everything else I see. Then yesterday saw 2 of them flying lower across the field to the fence line. Hope they stick around for a bit.
I'm worried about my Band-Tailed bro. They are skittish as hell, and this dude let me walk up within 2 feet of him when I was filling up the fountain. Now he's in a tree not moving, not even perched upright, it looks like he's laying down.
I have a few rats that hang around the bird feeders and compost pile. I was just watching one of them with my binoculars, and out of nowhere one of the neighborhood barred owls flew down from the magnolia tree and nailed him. It was unreal to watch and something I’m very thankful for getting the opportunity to see so clearly. Incredible.
Nah. He was in direct sunlight for 2 hours with his beak open, and his eyes blinking rapidly. Wasn't there when I came out, looked around the tree for a carcass, didn't see one. It's possible the heat got to it, or it was infected with this protozoa that really hits band-tailed's hard. Which means my fountain might have been the vector for transmission. I cleaned the fuck out of it yesterday to be safe.
I need to be more diligent about cleaning my feeders, especially during summer. I’m religious about cleaning my hummingbird feeders but need to be better with regular seed feeder cleanings. Thankfully I haven’t noticed any conjunctivitis, etc.