Never been into it really, also, there are not many birds in the city where I live, due to all the concrete, glass and moving aluminium everywhere.
But I do see the charme of the hobby though. I guess it's not so much the birding itself but much rather the idea of a calm, relaxing acticity, alao kind of triggering our instinct to collect things and above all, you actually learn something about it. I have always been fascinated with niche hobbies, was thinking about buying a telescope and start getting into space shit for instance (did not because again, city -> light pollution) and I've sometimes been magnet fishing with a friend, autism/10.

My equivalent of birding might be classical music. I have acquired quite the impressive collection of some 140 GB worth of classical music, all sorted by period, composer, orchestra, conductor, year of release etc. It's fun to collect the music at first but also categorizing it and learning about the different variations ans interpretations of the same pieces. If one piece particularly impresses me I would also conduct further research on its history, musical theory etc. Sounds like the ultimate geek hobby but it keeps me busy, entertained and one day, maybe, I'll upload my perfect database somewhere as an homage to what I think is going to be Europe's civilization's heritage and gift to the world - the gift of classical music.

>>24063
By magnet fishing, do you mean looking for old coins and stuff with a metal detector? If so, that’s really cool. I would probably give that a go if I had more disposable income.

It’s interesting that you would compare the curation of a music collection with birding, but I think I see where you’re coming from. Both these forms of entertainment involve a kind of sensual immediacy, as well as the more abstract satisfaction of accruing a large catalog of experiences to reflect on later.

For a long time I didn’t have much interest in birds either, but I started paying more attention to them last summer, when I took care of a nestling chipping sparrow whose nest had been destroyed by the tree service. I was very impressed by the rate at which the nestling grew and matured. Then maybe a month or two ago I started going out to watch birds for fun, first with a spotting scope and later with binoculars.

Also, my mom and my grandpa both like birds, so this hobby provides me a way to connect with them over a mutual interest. In fact my grandfather used to carve wooden birds (especially owls) before his stroke.

Recently I saw one of these birds, an indigo bunting, in Tennessee with my mom. That was a good day.

>>24062
I don't have a bird feeder now, but there was one in the last place I lived. Just like your experience, I remember it took a while for birds to notice, but once they did it was non-stop activity. Here are a few pictures. I don't know what pic 1 is(cardinal, maybe?), and pic 2 is a bluejay. Pic 3 is a male red-winged blackbird, and I think pic 4 is a female red-winged blackbird. Those are very territorial, and when they came around they would chase off all of the other birds. You can see the feeder is full of black-oil sunflower seeds, which was supposed to help discourage them. It actually did. While one or two would still stop by for the sunflower seeds, they don't like them and would quickly move along. When the feeder was full of a mixed wild birdseed they would stay there all day, and no other bird would dare approach.
Additional information: This type of birdfeeder was squirrel-proof. The wire cage, where birds would perch, was supported by springs. If a squirrel tried to eat the seed, it's weight would lower the cage and those metal decorative leaves would block the food.

>>24065

>I took care of a nestling chipping sparrow whose nest had been destroyed by the tree service.

I'm glad you were there to help. How long did you keep him?

I wanted to do this but with crows

>>24066

>How long did you keep him?

About a week. We soaked bits of dog kibble in water and fed this to him with tweezers. He grew so much in that time, and became so active, that we figured he had entered the fledgling stage and was ok to be released. No idea if that was the right thing to do tbh, but it's what happened. Too late now to correct any mistakes.

Red-winged blackbirds are ebin. Just last week at a wildlife refuge in Cape May I saw one chasing away an egret that had infringed on his territory. They're like pissed off little fighter jets. Luckily they don't seem to be very common in my neck of the woods, so I don't have to worry about these tyrants monopolizing my feeder.

On another note, I'd really like to see an owl IRL. I've noticed there are plenty of reported sightings of great horned owls in my area on eBird but so far I haven't encountered any. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, or at the wrong time.

>>24074
I'm from NJ btw. I just like that picture of the GHO in the Sonoran Desert.

>>24074

>I'd really like to see an owl IRL

Yeah, owls are cool. I've only seen owls in a zoo (Eurasian scops owls, Otus Scops; there were like six of them, and they were cute as fuck; they also have an adorable name in Russian, "сплюшка" ("splyushka", translates as "sleeper", but has nothing to do with sleeping and refers instead to the sound "splooo!" that their males sometimes make)), but it's actually not that uncommon to encounter them in the wild. My mom said that she saw one not so long ago in a tree near my dacha, and judging by the description ("small, ball-shaped and makes sounds like baby's crying") and the proximity to human dwellings, it was probably the little owl (Athene Noctua). I myself several years ago heard a specific cry, "oo-hoo", from the nearby forest; as far as I know, the only bird that makes that kind of low and loud sound in our country is the Eurasian eagle owl (Bubo Bubo).

>>24075
Yeah I instantly could tell roughly the region you are from based on those birds. Blue Jay's, red wing blackbirds, so on. Figured it was somewhere in the northeast not far from the coast like New England/NY/NJ.

>>24077
Your post reminds me that I have not been entirely truthful: in fact, I've seen owls IRL. What I meant to say is that I have not seen owls in the wild IRL—but recently I saw many owls in captivity at a raptor sanctuary in Charleston, South Carolina, including a variety of species from the genus Bubo, and even an F1 Bubo africanus x Bubo cinerascens hybrid (as I understand, however, these taxa were only recently classified as separate species). In particular I was impressed by the otherworldly mien of the Ural Owl, Strix uralensis. The fourth file attached to this post is a picture of a baby spectacled owl, Pulsatrix perspicillata, from that facility. He was very sleepy and grumpy :DDDDDDDD

>I've only seen owls in a zoo (Eurasian scops owls, Otus Scops; there were like six of them, and they were cute as fuck; they also have an adorable name in Russian, "сплюшка" ("splyushka", translates as "sleeper", but has nothing to do with sleeping and refers instead to the sound "splooo!" that their males sometimes make)), but it's actually not that uncommon to encounter them in the wild.

What a cute name for the Eurasian Scops-Owl. They are definitely adorable.

>My mom said that she saw one not so long ago in a tree near my dacha, and judging by the description ("small, ball-shaped and makes sounds like baby's crying") and the proximity to human dwellings, it was probably the little owl (Athene Noctua).

tfw no dacha owl :DDD

>I myself several years ago heard a specific cry, "oo-hoo", from the nearby forest; as far as I know, the only bird that makes that kind of low and loud sound in our country is the Eurasian eagle owl (Bubo Bubo).

That's awesome. When I was a young child, I used to imagine the cooing calls of the mourning dove, Zenaida macroura, were from owls in the woods. I still find it soothing to hear them sing in the early hours of the day. Here is a video clip of a mourning dove calling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oNljd7R1f8

>>24086
I think you might be interested in this YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwB1KTdX2PNgA4Q79PfOydw
It's by a woman who is an "aviation ornithologist": basically she patrols the premises of one of the Moscow's airports with her goshawk and scares off other birds so they don't crash into planes. She keeps several owls at her home and makes intredasting videos about them and other birds and animals. There are some English-subbed videos as well, but you should watch even the untranslated videos, simply for the sake of cute birdies.

Closest I've seen to owls in the wild are frogmouths. They're closer to nightjars but are often colloquially called owls around here.

They're ebin and hide during the day by sitting dead still and looking like a tree branch. They are also very expressive pirds for mene value.

>>24087
Neat, I’ll check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

>>24074

>They're like pissed off little fighter jets

Perfect description. I even had a red-wing blackbird chase me off once. I think she had her nest in a tree I had passed under, because that bird was not happy. I ducked my head, and kept moving, but she took a few more swoops in my direction before being satisfied I was leaving.

To echo >>24077, owls really are cool. I've only seen one in the wild, but it was too dark to identify the species. It was early, probably an hour before sunrise, and as I walked parallel to a wooden fence I noticed an odd bird perched atop one of the posts. My first reaction was a double-take, as I tried to identify what I was seeing. After that, I just watched it for a few seconds while I passed by. I must have been about a dozen feet away and it didn't even fly off. That made my list of strange bird encounters, along with the first time I saw a group of wild turkey crossing ahead of me on a bike trail.

Oh, and that bird in >>24066 pic 1 is a juvenile cardinal. I found a short video where it was being fed by a parent. I also found this other video of a bird feeder which wasn't squirrel proof. Squirrels are cool, too.

>>24086

>the cooing calls of the mourning dove

I've heard that before, and always attributed the sound to owls. It turns out it was a dove.

>>24088

>frogmouths

10/10 faces. It's like they know something.

>>24094
Yeah we actually once had a pheasant when I was a kid, but it was one of my first introductions to cult-like or mafiaish mindset of keeping secrets just because, who was it DEC? Some government agency that makes it illegal to keep them along with birds of prey and such, but the pheasant was injured so my dad built a cage for it and nursed it back to health. I missed that pheasant, now come to think of it. We actually got to pet it. It was very smooth and silky and a bit scared but we nursed it back to health and released it after a week or two.

Did you know that Russia has O-W-L? The world's largest extant species of owl, Blakiston's fish owl, can be found in the Russian Far East as well as parts of China and Japan.

>>24088
Caprimulgiformes are definitely among the most ebin orders of pirds. I mean, frogmouths seriously look like props from a deleted scene of The Dark Crystal (1982); and while nightjars are slightly less preposterous-looking, even the Eastern whip-poor-will would not seem out of place in a Jim Henson fever dream.

>>24116

>Blakiston's fish owl

They have a nice voice too. They're like Feodor Chaliapin of the bird world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8aSqXv5eTE

>>24118
What a lovely call. He sounds so otherworldly and powerful. Marvelous creatures.

i'm training my blackbird to troll the neighbourhood with all kinds of tunes.
it's fun because it's so unpredictable, some melodies he simply doesnt want to learn. other suddenly appear in his repertoire weeks or a year later.

I am pleased with these binoculars, which arrived by Amazon courier yesterday. I had asked on Twitter what the best entry-level binoculars were at a price point under 200 USD, and a bird geneticist from Oregon recommended the Vortex Crossfire 8x42. For 140$, these seem to be an excellent optic (although I am not a binocular pro). In any case, they function much better than the pair of binoculars I had been using, which were borrowed from my grandpa.

Someday I will buy a DSLR for wildlife photography, but I don't intend to cheap out on something like that. I must say it is kind of discouraging how prohibitive the cost of such instruments can be, although I understand that quality lenses are not cheap to make.

>>24125
Very ebin. Here is a cute video from Russia of a crow stealing a spoon :DDDD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpa1IUqvC6o

Going to have to buy a Squirrel Buster brand bird feeder I think. My jury-rugged countermeasures are not working at all.

>>24134
Rated great choice/10, with bonus points for doing proper research before purchase.

>>24136

>My jury-rugged countermeasures are not working

Yeah, it looks like that squirrel has settled in there. Those little ninjas are hard to stop, especially with bird feeders in, or near, trees. Mine was on a pole, but it was jumping distance to a tree, so that's how I ended up with that squirrel video. After that we got the Squirrel-Buster kind of feeder.
btw, what countermeasures did you try?

We (mostly my mother) feed birds during winter with bird food mix and oats.

For the crows and sparrows we also throw breadcrumbs and chicken bones on the
garage roof. Sometimes a pair of wild doves and magpies are also visiting.

Recently there are less swallows, blackbirds and starlings to see here.

I'm by no means into serious birding but I enjoy watching them when they are around

>>24146
I had taken two circular sandwich trays, drilled holes in the center of the trays, threaded them through the cord by which the feeder is suspended, and fixed the trays in place with knots so that they hung in series ~6” apart (the idea being that if a squirrel landed on one of these trays it would tip to one side and send the squirrel scrambling to the ground). The squirrels negotiated this obstacle easily. I feel like I’m playing a poorly balanced tower defense game against these crafty rodents.

>>24150
Yeah they're basically evolved to do stuff like that physically but what is amazing is how clever they are. I wonder if there's some way to domesticate a pet squirrel by raising one from a pup. I'd love to have a squirrel friend. They're such awesome creatures. Them and washbears.

They're really super clever which partly is why I find them so endearing, but they make mistakes. I once was sitting on the patio smoking a cigarette while watching one not too far away from me. The little guy was climbing up thin trees and tried some maneuver of jumping onto another tree and crawling on a branch about 8 feet off the ground and he grabbed onto one that was too thin and it snapped and he fell straight down onto the driveway pavement with a loud thud and let out a little yelp as he hit the ground then scurried away in a daze. I couldn't stop laughing. That was some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen. He landed on his back too so I guess they're not like cats. Not sure why he even reached out for it because it was obviously too thin to stay up straight without bending or to not break off, but he did, and it was a vertical drop. I think it was the yelp that made it funnier. It was like he just had a very human-like moment and I got to witness it.

Today I went to the South Cape May Meadows Nature Preserve with my new binoculars and saw a bunch of least terns, a pair of American oystercatchers, great egret pairs with offspring, glossy ibises, loads of red-winged blackbirds, and probably 60 purple martins. Unfortunately it looked like many of the wading birds were being crowded out by Canada geese, which were present in large numbers. I’m not sure why they have not been culled because they clearly are not migratory. They should all be humanely euthanized IMO.

Least terns are much smaller than oystercatchers, which are in turn somewhat smaller than seagulls. They like to fly parallel with the shore ~30 yards from the water’s edge, patrolling until they spot lunch—whereupon they appear to hover in place, and then abruptly dive like torpedoes into the water at their prey. Very ebin. Black skimmers execute more of a skimming dive to catch small fish, as their name would suggest.

>>24161
Yes squirrels are definitely ebin and quite clever. It’s amusing when they stand up and cautiously look around before attempting to raid my feeder, as if they were burglars trying to evade detection.

Smaller animals tend to be better at absorbing big falls; I think it has to do with their more favorable (higher) ratio of cross-sectional area to body mass, or at least that’s how Haldane famously explained it. Air resistance is proportional to cross-sectional area so it can better oppose gravity if you have a high cross-sectional area : mass.

>>24179

>it looked like many of the wading birds were being crowded out by Canada geese, which were present in large numbers.

That's unfortunate. We have a lot of great wading birds down here, probably because this whole state is basically a swamp with highways (Florida). My favorite are the sandhill cranes, because they're bold enough to walk amongst people without fear. Although they will give you a stern staring if you get too close-especially if their young are present. Like the great egret you saw, the cranes here are still travelling with their colts.
Oh, my least favorite wading bird is the limpkin. They have a loud territorial call, which they like to do in the middle of the night. Example attached. They can do that for hours.

>>24183
Oh man I guess you can
https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=Friendly+squirrel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7CFjiufqT0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJSbi6cIAt4
Poor sonbasket squirrel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk5z3C8MyZ0
Oh man just look at this thing and apparently squirrels doing stupid shit and falling is more common than I thought
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nPCy9kbAQg

Hey yurop can I have one of your red squirrels and maybe a black squirrel or two too?

>>24235
Punk rock pird :-DDDDDD

>>24207
Yeah there’s loads of content like this. Squirrels can be very amusing to watch, especially when they’re up to no good.

>>24206
They look pleasant enough in the species illustrations from my Peterson field guide, but now that I’ve heard the limpkin’s call I understand your antipathy. Here’s an ebin story from this past Spring about Canada goose brood parasitism of a Sandhill Crane couple. You can also find more recent pics of the “adopted” gosling online.

https://www.audubon.org/news/this-sandhill-crane-couple-adopted-baby-goose

>>24235
I like that bird.

>>24248
The photographer who is documenting the crane/gosling family takes great pictures. She has one which showed the young cranes developing wing feathers, still covered in their protective sheath. Incredible detail. These images, which I took this morning, aren't nearly as nice. The lighting was poor, and I can't get very close to the birds. Even so, if that heron would have held still for another few seconds I know I could have taken at least one decent pic.

Saw an osprey and an American kestrel at a nature preserve today. Also loads of terns that I couldn’t identify.

>>24255
Nice pics Ernst. I especially like the limpkin by the water’s edge.

Maybe this impression is only the result of recent trends in cinema, but it does seem to me like the quality of sunlight in Florida is somehow different from that of higher latitudes—more surreal almost.

The roosting ibises and egrets is a great shot also. There are so many!

>>24267
I've seen loads of wild ducks and a few Blue Herons which was pretty cool. Those are really graceful looking birds and their flight is so incredibly silent. Plus plenty of hawks and owls, although I'm kind of superstitious about owls and sort of see them as messengers of death at this point, especially if you can see an owl looking at you while it's still light out. Happened to me twice and I forget who or what died the one time but another time it was a classmate who was missing and we found out later she committed suicide.

Also I've seen plenty of songbirds but at this point I can kind of see how cats are getting to be seen as a pest at this point. When I was growing up we used to have so many amazing varieties of birds, and then I found a lost kitten and brought her back to the house, and somehow she got pregnant and we had barn cats ever since and barely any birds. The fucking things absolutely decimated the wildlife and even were hunting rabbits as big as themselves.

I mean, it's hard to hate a cat especially if it's your fault, and we liked the barn cats, but goddamn if they didn't kill fucking everything out there. They even took out frogs, along with the squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, and damn near every single bird except for the crows for some reason. Moral of that story I guess is that cats actually do need some kind of strict population control unless you want them to destroy all wildlife except deer in a mile radius.

>>24277
I’m very jealous of your owl encounters. I’d love to see one in the wild, even during the day! Maybe the notion that owls seen in the daytime portend misfortune is a regional thing. Any idea what kind of owls they were?

I also saw a great blue heron today. They are indeed very impressive creatures, especially in flight. In particular I was struck by the length of the legs and the sheer bulk of the animal.

Cats are notorious pird killing machines. Luckily there are no outdoor cats in my area.

Polite sage because the thread has been bumped a lot today

>>24279
Yeah Great Horned Owl, or at least I'm positive one of them was but I can't remember well with the other. I didn't mention that they were possibly both GHO because I didn't realize they weren't a regional thing.to this day I try to hide my state but it's harder to blend in with the fat here than it was on the KC.

You know what I'm actually not quite entirely sure just where the fuck I even got that idea from. I think it might actually even be a Native American type thing, but I've never known any of them and to the best of my knowledge it isn't a common thing. It's just another one of the peculiar superstitions I've got about things that apparently some others do as well, like finding out white actually does mean death, it's just not from my culture. Funnily enough I don't give a shit about white lighters and have specifically bought them to dry on them though, but I don't use white bed sheets or blankets for this reason.

Some superstitions just seem completely intuitive and natural to me and I often see them play out in reality in abject defiance of obvious logic and reason. Sighting an Owl in daylight not far from you strikes me as one of a messenger from the underworld sort of, or some such similar thing as the omen of a death for no obvious reason, but it's what I have experienced. Unless possibly you're going like birdwatching and birdhunting.

I feel bad for the mice though. You could sometimes find owl pellets on the forest floor filled with bones and hair which is a pretty brutaland metal af thing to think about happening to someone or something that feels fear and pain. Just minding your business at night looking for a nibble and then with no warning a silent death takes you.

>and the sheer bulk of the animal.

Owls are pretty f'ing small actually. What they can do is what many birds do which is puff out their feathers to look intimidating when they feel threatened, which is most of the time when a human encounters them, or fights over mating. When you get a bird wet unless it's a chicken or some kind of ground bird they're amazingly thin and tiny.

It's kind of a retarded video but you get the idea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j1NGmCCvac
They only look big. Keep in mind, these things have to fly, and do it silently. That means they evolutionarily can't afford to even add a gram of unneccesary weight.

>Cats are notorious pird killing machines. Luckily there are no outdoor cats in my area.

I know. It's only been lately thinking about it that I realize there is a pretty good point to complaining about people's damn pet cats especially the ones that get to wander outside. Makes me also feel less bad about obese cats, because the fat fuckers can't arse themselves to destroy our songbirds.

>Polite sage because the thread has been bumped a lot today

Yeah but it's a really good cozy one.

>>24268
Yeah, I wish I had taken more pictures of the limpkin. I was much closer to him than any of the others, and probably could have squatted down without scaring him off. Next time, I guess. And one thing I can say for sure about the Florida sky, is that it changes quickly. Clouds seem to form and dissipate in the blink of an eye.

>>24275
Thanks. To catch the ibises and egrets in those trees, you've got to be there right at daybreak. After that, they're all out looking for breakfast. It's quite a sight to see them all leave at once.

>>24279
One more bump from me for the day. Polite sage politely negated X--DDD.

>>24282

>Owls are pretty f'ing small actually.

yeah I was talking about the great blue heron that I had seen

Neat videos of lorikeets and cockatoos interacting (posted on Twitter by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology).

currently i can observe a female redstart (phoenicurus ochruros) breeding. it's actually the second time this year and i'm fairly confident that it will be another success, since the location of the nest is chosen quite clever. it's not reachable for enemies such as martens, cats, racoons and so on. sqirrels shouldn't have a problem to get to it though, but it seems that they haven't noticed it so far. other birds aside from the usual local suspects (swallow, sparrow, blackbird, finch, raven, magpie, ducks etc.) i do observe frequently in the garden/wood or crossing my property in the air are woodpeckers, owls, jays, herons and different birds of prey, from which the pair of red kites i see everyday in the morning at the same time are probably my favorites. i've managed once to get close to the two (~2m) while they were on the ground eating. from short distance they appear much bigger than they seem in the air and of course they are very beautiful with their reddish feathers. i also like owls a lot, however when they are breeding the loud screeches of the young hungry owls and the barking of the parents is very annoying during nightime tbh.

>>24325

>great blue heron

They really do transform when they stretch out their legs and wings in flight, don't they? Pic related.

>>24341
Is that cockatoo being playful, or aggressive? I would guess from the lorikeets perspective there isn't much difference between the two.

>>24345

>the pair of red kites i see everyday in the morning at the same time are probably my favorites

I like it when I can identify the same birds day after day. It's like they become a part of the neighborhood.

In bird related news this country does a lot of stupid shit, and I mean a LOT of stupid shit, but this one just amazes me
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-farallon-islands-rat-poison-20190707-story.html
What could possibly go wrong?

>>24345

>i also like owls a lot, however when they are breeding the loud screeches of the young hungry owls and the barking of the parents is very annoying during nightime tbh.

Wow I wish I had this problem. Do you live in a rural area? I’m from the suburbs and I’ve never really had an owl encounter, although sometimes I hear what might be Great Horned Owls hooting from the woods nearby.

Kites are incredibly graceful fliers. At a raptor sanctuary I visited recently, they had a kite trained to pluck meat directly from the trainer’s bare hand in mid-flight. If the kite had been even a little off it would have torn up her hand, but it never missed the mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9omQ739vL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9_1Kxo1FDo

>>24361

>Wow I wish I had this problem

young owls call for food in this manner for hours during nighttime. imagine there's a bunch of trees housing an owl's nest just a dozen meters away from your house and, most importantly, from your bedroom window... simply closing the window doesn't help, i need to put ear protection on i normally use when i'm cutting wood with the disk saw in order to get rid of the screeching and barking. all is forgotten though when i can observe the young owls leaving their nest, sitting on a tree looking around and making their first attempts at flying. that takes some luck though since they hide themselves well up in the trees.

>Do you live in a rural area?

yes, it's pretty rural. but certainly not as rural as those vast rural areas in the usa, i imagine.

>Great Horned Owls hooting

they are rather rare here, although a neighbour had one in the barn once. most common are long-eared owls (asio otus), which is the species i have to deal with from time to time, and tawny owls (strix aluco).

>>24362
Wow, now I understand why the vocalizations bother you. That would drive me crazy. Although I'd like to see a wild owl, I am not eager to lose sleep in exchange for this privlege.

Two fluffy white chicks made their first appearance this week from a nest box erected almost five years ago outside Downpatrick, much to the delight of wildlife friendly farmer David Sandford and conservationists from Ulster Wildlife who installed it.

“About two weeks ago, I thought I heard snoring sounds coming from one of the nest boxes,” said Mr Sandford, who chairs the Nature Friendly Farming Network and has won awards for his sustainable farming work.

“This is a distinctive begging call made by hungry chicks, so you can imagine my excitement after years of occasional sightings. I contacted Ulster Wildlife immediately to take a look and was ecstatic when we found chicks.”

This now brings the number of active barn owl nest sites in Northern Ireland back up from two to three; a welcome addition to our tiny barn owl population, which is estimated to be fewer than 30 to 50 breeding pairs.

Conor McKinney, from Ulster Wildlife, said, “We are delighted for David whose wonderful farm is now home to a family of barn owls and pleased one of our nest boxes finallly attracted some special occupants. Barn owls are in serious decline in Northern Ireland caused by a lack of nest sites and suitable foraging habitat. Luckily, this pair couldn’t have chosen a more sympathetic farm to set up home with wild bird cover, meadows and mature hedgerows – holding plentiful mice and shrews for barn owls to thrive.”

The chicks were checked and ringed under licence from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency to help monitor their health and survival. During the process, a ring was spotted on one of the adults as it flew from the nest, which the charity believes may have been one of the chicks it ringed over the years from a neighbouring nest site on the Ards Peninsula.

http://bit.ly/2XGSKea

I photographed some birds this morning, using a slightly better camera than last time. Pic 1 is a great egret, which I identified by its dark legs. They are visually similar to a white heron, but heron have light colored legs. Pic 2 is a great blue heron. It doesn't have a head plume, and its bill is dark, which indicate that it is still immature (btw, this website was very helpful with identification: https://www.allaboutbirds.org)
Pics 3 and 4 show a pair of sandhill cranes and a white ibis flock. They were occupying a local baseball field.

>>24563
These last pictures of a tricolored heron and white ibises came out the best. By the time I found this trio the sun had fully risen, which provided great light.

>>24563
>>24564
Your sep ibises are weird. I'm too used to the humble bin chicken to see actual wild ones :-DD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4dYWhkSbTU

>>24578
Very cool. Your bin chickens look like the hybrid offspring of an american white ibis and a black vulture.

>>24579
Tbh, ours look more like the Sacred Ibis, so I think that the pink ones are the odd ones out.

The video is satire, by the way. They're just the White Ibis. They're something of a folk hero that the nation has a love-hate relationship with, hence why they're something of an icon while being referred to with such titles as bin chicken, tip turkey, dump duck, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO-OpFjHRbE

>>24581

>a folk hero that the nation has a love-hate relationship with

I totally understand. That video had me going until the narrater mentioned the bird's fast metabolism: "one in-one out" XX--DD. Top rate; The deadpan delivery reminded me of that Clarke and Dawe "The Front Fell Off" sketch, where it takes a second to hit you.

>>24586
We wuz egyptians and shit. Ayers Rock is a landing platform for ancient ayys like the pyramids.
t. knower of ancient australian secrets

I was almost attcked twise by Glaucous gull not long ago. Not best experience I have. Now when I hear this "kurly-kurly" sounds, I instinctively watch over at sky in case someone aiming at mine heda like WW2 plane.

>>24600

>I was almost attcked twise by Glaucous gull

You have my sympathies. I mentioned further up in this thread my encounter with an aggressive blackbird, but those are pretty small. I can only imagine what it's like to have something almost as big as a goose flying at you.

>>24602
>>24600
Were you guys born and raised in major cities or something? I just can't wrap my head around feeling intimidated by anything like that or why people run away from geese. The only birds that can actually really hurt are roosters and even then just because their spurs are great at hurting your kicking leg. The funniest thing is these kinds of creatures are all way more likely to attack you when you show fear. The only thing that tends to meet your aggression head on is roosters. Because they're right cunts is what they are.

>>24613
It's not than I'm afraid of a bird attack doing physical damage; short of an Alfred Hitchcock scenario, I know that most of them are fairly harmless. That being said, I still have this instinct to run withdraw whenever I sense a potential pecking or scratching. Tbh, I would have the same reaction if a squirrel started sprinting at me. There is just a lot of uncertainty in that kind of situation. If a bird flies aggressively in my direction, I have no idea how far it's going to go. All things considered, in moments like that a dignified retreat serves the interest of all parties.

>>24621

> Tbh, I would have the same reaction if a squirrel started sprinting at me.

Okay yeah you are definitely city folk. I even was going to make a joke about that exact scenario but felt it was being too mean, innaccurate, and demeaning. Like how I visited someone in a major city in the last couple years and was told point blank how I should be careful about them and how they act weird and frightened around even small dogs. I thought my friend was joking at first.

Like what the fucking hell? But then again I probably get the same reactions from city folks when I'm clearly apprehensive being around a metro.

> If a bird flies aggressively in my direction, I have no idea how far it's going to go. All things considered, in moments like that a dignified retreat serves the interest of all parties.

Well it probably does I guess, but then again I guess this shit could probably cause a lot of people to back down too. I normally have a fight instinct rather than flight. Truth be told I am surprised this shit hasn't gotten me in more trouble than it has in the past. The only thing I ever actually was intimidated by was seeing what looked like a large blackbear's eyes glowing in the brush about 8-10 feet from me while walking someone's dogs at night, and that was mostly just because well I was alone at night with a damn bear and for some obscure reason only had a tiny 3inch pocket knife at the time rather than a large hunting knife like I usually carried back then. But even then, first of all a knife wouldn't fucking do anything in that situation but be a psychological prosthetic dick to calm your nerves while actually only pissing off the bear if you had to use it, and secondly, all it's going to do is piss off the bear if you try to use it. Plus it's just a black bear I'm pretty sure, and those things are docile as hell.

Otherwise I have never known an animal to trigger that instinct. But, funnily enough, you're probably the more likely survivor in the long term due to disease. Maybe you'd flee from the seagull but I'd probably get that tiny scratch that gives me some kind of bird pox. Or catch rabies from something.

Speaking of rabies, did you know the whole bat population is being wiped out? Some fungal infection that started in the NE has made it's way to Northern Cali and is killing bats there too. Not entirely bird related but well it flies at least. I don't mind bats, other than the whole being Nosferatu tier ugly fucks carrying 100% fatal incurable disease and all.