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.

>>24622

>I even was going to make a joke about that exact scenario but felt it was being too mean, innaccurate, and demeaning.

I appreciate the restraint even though your assessment of my fortitude was surprisingly accurate X/DDD.

>Some fungal infection that started in the NE has made it's way to Northern Cali and is killing bats there too.

No, I hadn't heard about this. And apparently it's only affecting American bats because European and Asian bats have evolved to coexist with the fungus. So someone, or something, must have accidently transported the pseudogymnoascus destructans spores from a population which was immune to one that wasn't. Isn't that how end of the world stories begin? X<DD. Well, this article provides a bit of hope:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/white-nose-syndrome-bat-fungus-treatment-animals-news

A number of different treatments are being tested, including a lickable vaccine gel, a pineapple fungus which inhibits the growth of other fungi, and ultraviolet light. It seems their goal is to prevent bat colonies from completely collapsing, and then allow the stronger surviving bats to reproduce and spread their natural resistance to this white-nose syndrome.

>I don't mind bats, other than the whole being Nosferatu tier ugly fucks carrying 100% fatal incurable disease and all.

Yeah, I like bats too. They're essential for controlling those plague spreading mosquitoes, which more than makes up for any disease the bats might harbor. To that end, we even have bat boxes hanging in a local park.

>>24613
I live in a city, where absolute majority of bird population of cource Sparrows and Pigeons. Of cource at summer there a lot of glaucous gull however it was first time they attacked me. Fieldfares, crows or picas never attacked me. And I guess guys like tits, eurasian bullfinchs, black-headed gulls and so one are too small to be a real treat.

Of cource, I spend a lot time of my life in god's forgotten village in middle of nowhere, and seen birds like peregrines, storks or rooks, but was never under attack from them. I dunno, maybe if you live somewhere in US midwest or south, or in Australia there might be thing with constant danger and every time you go outside of house you need to wear a medival helmet and protect yourself with an anti-aircraft machinegun, but this is was not the case in places where I was around, and I was generally around many places of russian north-west federal district.

>>24633
There are only a few really aggressive birds here and it's something of a misrepresentation of them. Plovers are just ballsy as fuck and will nest at an airport and have standoffs with taxiing aircraft, let alone swoop the occasional hooman. I've also seen them stand in front of cars trying to leave a parking lot and not budging even to revs and horns, forcing the car to just go to another exit :-DDD

Magpies are more notorious for swooping but it's only about 10% of males that do it during breeding season, they are known to split hedas open though if they get you good, and will throw themselves into your face and claw at your eyes if they're particularly threatened :-DD

t. australia pro

Just saw a red tailed hawk soaring over my neighborhood. He was rather small so I think he might be a juvenile: it's the right time of year, anyway.

I've been trying to get back into drawing and lately that's meant ink sketches of scops owls. Feathers are tough to draw because, like hair, you must lean heavily on your ability to perceive and reproduce value. I think I may start drawing birds in graphite until I get the hang of representing feathers.

>>24613

>why people run away from geese

geese can bite and hit harder than roosters, so when coming near a bunch of geese in a bad mood choosing to avoid a close encounter is not a stupid decision, especially when kids are around. also, geese can serve fairly well as sort of a lightweight guard troop against unwanted humans, they have no chance against even small predators (fox etc.) though.

>>25335
I feel like picking a fight with a goose just to prove you wrong. They have no hard parrot or rodent like mandibles, no claws, no spurs or spikes anywhere, no horns, just a big stupid bird that tries to beat you with its wings while trying to look big and threatening. They're the New Jersey Italians of the bird world but with less cologne.

>>25335

>geese can bite and hit harder than roosters,

I doupt that. Those roosters breeded for rooster fights are really powerfull animals.

>>25335
reckon I could heem a goose easily

>>25342

>They're the New Jersey Italians of the bird world but with less cologne.

Sta ta zee, you walking on very thin ice.

>>25342
pick a fight with at least 5 goose at the same time. i said "a bunch".

>>25344
you just need to catch him, then it's over. also standard roosters usually flee, goose on the other hand often go unprovoked into attack mode.

angry swans are also no fun, by the way.

Spending the weekend in rural PA (Luzerne county). Heard several Great Horned Owls hooting last night but failed to find any roosting in conifers during my morning walk. However I did see a kettle of three red-tailed hawks about 15 minutes ago. Also, yesterday there were a bunch of eastern bluebirds hanging out in the orchard, as well as a yellow warbler and what I think was a hairy woodpecker. Plenty of barn swallows and chipping sparrows around too.

red kite footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub36dcfxvNw

12 birds of prey and their voices. these are the most common ones in germany.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o33pGC__iF4

Great Horned Owl at a sanctuary assuming a defensive posture in response to my dog’s presence. Many of these birds are unreleasable owing to injuries sustained in car collisions.

>>25777
You can often find owls more easily shortly after dusk I think. During the day they're usually hiding.

I have also just discovered a bird called a Kakapo. It seems like it would make a fantastic dog tier family pet. Does Australia have any similar birds that aren't critically endangered?

While I was helping someone move this past week, a brief rain left puddles around the truck. A few Muscovy ducks came out to enjoy the fresh water.

>>26822
Very nice. I would like to keep pet ducks someday, maybe when I have a house out in the country. One of my dad’s friends in upstate Pennsylvania has several Swedish Blues and Muscovy ducks.

>>26823
Thanks. Even though I'm only 20 miles away from that place, I've never seen any Muscovy in my neighborhood, let alone been that close to them. It was quite a sight, and I'm glad I took a few pictures. They're beautiful birds, and surprisingly large.
To keep pet ducks do you have to set up a coop, like chickens? Or will they stay if you just provide the food?

>>26825
You absolutely need a coop. Possums, washbar, various weasel family types and foxes among others will all go after your ducks, as will things like wolves and mountain lions if you have them. You also need solid wire fence not that flimsy mesh and to bury it no less than 6"-12" deep so the smarter and stronger animals dont get in there and tear them up.
t. Not him

>>26827
Now that you've pointed it out, I can't believe I forgot about predators. Without providing protection, you would have to constantly worry about which of your pets would survive. That's not a pleasant thought. You're right, ducks absolutely need a coop.

B I N C H I C K E N

T
I
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T
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K
E
Y

I received a squirrel buster classic bird feeder for my birthday. Although I hung it three days ago I still haven’t seen any pirds visiting—which is normal I think since it usually takes them a while to find new feeders. Yesterday while walking around my neighborhood looking for stylopized paper wasps I saw a group of four blue jays, a red-bellied woodpecker, and a cute little chipmunk scurrying around. In particular I was happy to see the chipmunk: I used to see them frequently but this has changed in recent years.

I like birds and also feed birds

I hate birds. When I was a kid i was attacked by geeses and severly bitten in face and arms. Since then I spread poisoned breadcrumbs. I am not a man who likes to be afraid of birds.

Moral - You should think about the birds first.

Moral - You are not a man who likes to be afraid of birds.

Moral - Don't throw poison breadcrumbs at a bird unless you are a very brave man.

The moral I will leave with you, is do not throw the bird. If you do so be careful not to be hurt too badly either as your own fingers or claws or the bird's face.

The moral I find more interesting, is when people are out for a walk or an evening stroll. Many times people have got very lost on road, and they are attacked by a very scared, very angry bird. Often they end up being bitten and scratched by birds, and the person who did this is often left with a very nasty scar, which is a terrible shame.

i like ornithology, but I believe his work in ornithology is not unique. I thought this was the only "classic" book about this bird - well now I don't know. I'm surprised that he thought the two books were different.

One of the reasons I did this project was to try to understand the relationship between the ornithologists of old and the avian biologists of today, and I think this study shows that some of us (myself included) just don't get it.

For example the most well-known study was that of the American alligator, which is often described as a carnivoran, and this is not entirely correct. The most well-known non-carnivore is the Asian carp. Anecdotal evidence is showing their importance in fisheries, and the Asian carp are more or less an aquatic equivalent of the American alligator, for reasons we will explore eventually. This study is a bit more in-depth, but is certainly not definitive.

>>30052
Lol this is pasta right? Resident (non-migratory) geese in public parks and retention ponds are a nuisance, I agree, but spreading poisoned crumbs is not a reasonable method of culling geese. Also I’m not sure how you would go about poisoning bread crumbs anyway.

>>30087
Dissolve laxatives or rat poison and infuse breda with it.

There are lots of birds in my backyard, but most of them are in the trees so I don't really get to interact with them. One of the few I get to approach often is this https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furnarius_rufus (I'm posting the article in spanish because it has a map with its distribution)
Sometimes I also see a woodpecker and another bird who must be about the size of my torso, but I don't know its name(it seems to fight with opossums though)

>>30092
And what about all of the non-goose critters that consume the poisoned bread?

>>24088
That's a funny bird

>>30099
Also, what about the scavengers that consume the poisoned goose corpses?

>>30010
Chipmunks are cool, but I don't really see them down here. I did spot a few while visiting NY/NJ, and their scampering reminded me of high energy kittens.

I've been hearing a lot of mourning doves lately. I see them too, on wires and such, but they never make their distinctive call when I'm passing by. I've noticed hawks are the opposite. Every time I walk near one perched on a pole or fence he starts screeching. I figure he's angry that my presence is scaring off his prey.
I'm also still trying to get a really great picture of a Limpkin. I came across this one in a retention pond a few days ago, but my camera phone isn't very good.

>>30087
Pasta, or maybe just a bit of random words on the thread topic like >>30081. I question the sincerity behind some of these new posts, and while it may be connected to recent board events, find the effort is at least creative and even a bit interesting. Either way, don't take them too seriously.

>>30093

>another bird who must be about the size of my torso

It's amazing how large birds can get. We have a lot of really big cranes that walk on the sidewalks like people.

>>30106

>I question the sincerity behind some of these new posts,

They are autogenerated spam from kohlretards

>>30112
proofs

>>30025
What kind of pirds do you encounter frequently in Israel?

>>30160
Wait, kohl isn't dead? Don't bully I don't know about any secret boards.

>>30160
If true, bots make better posts then those retards.

today I saw a yellow rumped warbler, downy woodpecker, blue jay and northern cardinal while walking around my neighborhood

however, I still have not seen any pirds visiting my feeder

>>24062
Are there golden oriols in the States?

It is my favorite bird. But almost extinct in Germany now, because of grave overpopulation in Germany.

>>30457

>grave overpopulation in Germany.

human overpopulation, I obviously meant.

>>30457

>golden oriols

We have several different oriols, and a major league baseball team is even named after one species(Baltimore), but we don't have the golden oriol. They're beautiful birds, I hope you don't lose them.

I was able to get pretty close to an Anhinga this morning, and captured these pictures. It's funny, because I just mentioned this bird in the Today thread last week. They're usually either swimming underwater, or on the opposite side of a pond too far away to get a good look at. This one was only a dozen feet away, and didn't move even after another nearby bird flew off. As you can see, he was holding his wings out to dry, but also moving his neck in a serpentine way(they're sometimes called the snakebird). I don't know if that motion means he had just swallowed a fish, or if there is another reason they do that.

while collecting mushrooms a couple days ago i encountered a kingfisher who was following a creek with lightspeed. i've never seen one in real life this close. the footage i just checked on youtube does not do them justice. ofc i can't describe the experience better (even less so in a language that is not my native one). anyway, when they are sitting on a perch they shimmer blue-metallic but in flight the light and shadows of the trees and the reflecting surface of water make them look like chrome. they are super fast and their flight resembles the flight of a missile or aircraft.

>>30632
Sounds like an ebin afternoon. Thank you for sharing this experience with us Ernst. I hope to see this pird IRL someday.

This particular one doesn't look too healthy, but still you have to love this marvelous species. although this one is Indian one and not a Western Eurasian golden oriole.

>>30632
Nice story. Kingfisher are really hard to spot. Where in Germany did you spot it?

>>30507

>Anhinga

They are really crazy bird. Great that you see one that close in wild nature.

A flock of around a hundred common grackles landed behind my house an hour ago. I think they are migrating.

today I saw white-throated sparrows and cedar waxwings for the first time

>>30960
it would be more correct to say I identified these birds for the first time. of course I've seen and heard them before

>>30960
>>30964
I appreciate your dedication to precise language :D.
I think I know how the waxwing recieved its name; they're so smooth it looks as though they're made of plastic. Were you out bird watching, or did you get lucky and have them cross your path?
I had that happen the other day, when I spotted a really small yellow bird just darting from tree to tree. I couldn't identify it, but it wasn't one of the usual neighborhood birds. You know how you get used to seeing certain species all the time? And them one day there is a new one passing through. I guess there are a lot of different birds back in the wooded areas, and for the most part I only notice the ones which venture out. I think the reason our wading birds don't hide is because there are so many retention ponds near the roadways.

>>30971

>I think I know how the waxwing recieved its name; they're so smooth it looks as though they're made of plastic.

That’s a good guess, but I think their name comes from the red waxy secretions that cover the tips of some of their secondary feathers. There are a number of theories regarding the function of these waxy tips. I’m not sure which is most widely accepted presently, but I’ve heard there is a positive relationship between the age of the bird and the quantity of tips, and that this may be used in mate selection (older birds are more experienced and tend to rear more young in a season).

>Were you out bird watching, or did you get lucky and have them cross your path?

I was out birdwatching in my neighborhood with my vortex crossfire 8x42 binoculars (it’s a cheap entry level optic). There are wooded sections and thickets in my neighborhood because it’s a circular suburban development with an undeveloped buffer area in the center, so I can see a decent number of birds just walking around here near my house. I often see blue jays without looking for them while walking to class however.

>I couldn't identify it, but it wasn't one of the usual neighborhood birds. You know how you get used to seeing certain species all the time? And them one day there is a new one passing through.

I love it when this happens, because it means I get to learn about a new pïrd :-DDD

>I think the reason our wading birds don't hide is because there are so many retention ponds near the roadways.

You’re the Florida Ernst, right? I enjoy your pictures of wading birds. Makes me want to visit the state again.

Attached is a pic of waxwing feather tips

>>30998

>That’s a good guess

Yeah, I thought I had that one figued out :D. Now that you highlighted the wax secretions, I can see them on the first pic. If those don't serve any other function, it makes sense they would be for mating selection. I remember seeing a nature special on a bird which makes an elaborate ground nest, but not to raise young in. The only purpose was to impress females......I looked it up, the bowerbird. I wonder if the older bowerbirds get better at building; that way the more intricate structures could indicate age, like the waxwing.

>undeveloped buffer area

We have the same here; small areas which have been set aside for wetlands/migration protection.

>Florida

That's me; I'm glad you like the pictures. I don't have my phone(camera) with me very often, but when I do there always seems to be something interesting to share. It was incredible to stumble across that Anhinga. Incidently, after they remove the fish from their beak(as seen here >>30674), they have to toss it up and catch it headfirst. I learned that to perfect this tricky maneuver, they practice by playing with sticks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSIuGMrRFg8

I moved my feeder this morning after weeks of no takers and now loads of chickadees are visiting! I'm so happy

>>31016
That anhinga video is pretty neat. It’s very interesting IMO to consider the behaviors which pirds much learn in the wild. For instance, captive songbirds may have stunted repertoires of calls if they are not socialized among others of their kind during a critical window of song practice and acquisition. I also once read that, according to some ornithologist from the early 20th century, great horned owls raised in captivity and fed by humans are not capable of hunting live prey.

>>31066

>loads of chickadees are visiting

Excellent! Did you move it to a more open/visible spot? Or is the new location basically the same, and the birds were just being picky?

>>31115
With so much learned behavior, it's hard to believe they're so closely related to lizards. I imagine evolving towards flight forced them to develop more complicated brains. Our cranes will let you get pretty close to them, and to me it seems they're calculating when it's safe, and when they should flee(it's usually safe; cranes are protected. We're legally not even allowed to feed them). Since that species lives so closely with us, that's probably another example of a behavior that comes from experience, rather than just instinct. I know their colts start out pretty timid, but get more comfortable as they age.

>>31126

>Excellent! Did you move it to a more open/visible spot? Or is the new location basically the same, and the birds were just being picky?

The former: I moved the feeder from under a tree, where it was kind of hard to see, to a spot with better visibility. So far it has just been carolina chickadees actually eating from the feeder, but a few blue jays have investigated the spot also, and a carolina wren was hanging out underneath the feeder for a while. The next time I go to tractor supply I think I will buy a suet cage: it's pretty easy to make suet cakes if you have bacon grease and bird seed on hand. Perhaps with suet I can attract some of the red bellied and downy woodpeckers in the area.

>With so much learned behavior, it's hard to believe they're so closely related to lizards.

Causal understanding of water displacement by a crow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04

>>31135
It's good to hear your feeder is getting busy. You tried being patient with the old location, but you have to be smart enough to know when it's time to change your approach. If you set up a suet cage, make sure you have a way to keep those squirrels from raiding it.

>water displacement by a crow

That video is incredible; I knew crows were intelligent, but had never seen it so clearly demonstrated.

I was talking to my biochem professor last night and he said he buys suet cakes with red pepper mixed in which deters squirrels but apparently has no effect on birds. I might try this product once I get a suet cage.

update: I bought a suet cage and a suet cake at tractor supply but it is raining heavily so I have not yet hung it outside

>>31672
Good luck with the suet cage; drawing some woodpeckers would be awesome. To me those have always seemed like an exotic species.

Someone in my neighborhood has a hummingbird feeder, which I just noticed this week. I must walk with my head down a lot, because it's bright pink and hard to miss now that I know it's there. I've never seen a hummingbird, and apparently spotting them is rare even though we have them most of the year.

>>31760
little Berndbirds :-)

>>31760
I see them all the time around my parents' home. Then again, it's in a small suburban island surrounded by coastal wilderness, and the development has lots of hummingbird-friendly flowers planted all over.

Truly they are the best birds. You can see why Mesoamericans were so obsessed with them. They're truly like little flying jewels, far surpassing any work of art that can be made by man.

I’m a pird oligarch now

>>31784

>the development has lots of hummingbird-friendly flowers planted all over.

Yeah, the right flowers make all the difference. Most of the gardening/landscaping in the area is composed of palms and evergreen shrubs-very low maintenance stuff, but not much of a hummingbird draw. My best chance for seeing one will probably be to catch them at that feeder, or on a bottlebrush or hibiscus tree. We have a fair amount of those, which I assume is because Lowe's sells them cheap and they don't die. Tbh, given the terrible soil and brutal sun, not dying is probably the biggest factor in neighborhood plant variety; I know that right now the front yard isn't full of first choices, but has the things that lived.

>>31813

>pird oligarch

That didn't take long, and you even pulled in those woodpeckers.

>>31831
Hey I saw this and thought of you. Also really cool to see IRL are hummingbird moths.

You know what cats really are a bunch of rats. Ever since those barncats moved in we went from lots of wildlife to basically just a bunch of shitty cats.
t. Decidedly not a cat person after all

>>31834
I have no idea how that guy kept his finger so steady. Absolutely amazing video, thanks for posting.

>hummingbird moths

When I finally do see a hummingbird, I'll have to double-check that it has a beak-it might actually a moth :D

A bald eagle actually flew over my neighborhood this morning. Should I use an exclamation point for that? I never know when to use those. I couldn't believe it. He/she was flying low, and I saw it for an instant before a roof blocked my view, but when it appeared on the other side there was no mistaking it. I was hoping that meant one might have moved into the area, but it turns out their daily range is huge-up to 10k acres(15sq miles). Still, if I saw it once, there's a chance I might see it again- especially if the changing seasons have affected the food supply. Of all the days to not have a camera. Well, I guess I'll just have to post some live bald eagle nest-cams:

Northeast FL Bald Eagle Nest Cam
https://nefleaglecam.org/

Southwest Florida Eagle Cam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfbRmTUXGs0

>>24062
Haussparrow is a typical Berndfokel .

they always turn up when Bernd has cookies in the garden

>>32137
:3

House sparrows are considered pests in North America, but I think they are cute. Those who put out houses for our native purple martins must evict house sparrows periodically because otherwise the sparrows will take over the entire birdhouse.

>>32120
You definitely need an exclamation point when saying "Dog bless Ameriga!" in response.

:-DDD

>>32140
We actually see them pretty frequently-ish now because of conservation efforts although you still get the occasional asshole hunter taking one out. Iirc the last time I saw one was a year ago and I don't live in a rural area either.
t. Not ornithology guy

I saw two northern flickers over the weekend. Also the juncos have arrived.

just caught a red tailed hawk eating an american robin in my backyard!

>>33638
RIP

>>33638
>>33639
My God, I've never seen anything like that. Did the hawk eat everything but the feathers?

>>33641
I think the hawk probably carried what was left of the corpse with him when he flew away, and the feathers on the ground were those that had been dislodged earlier as he was consuming the robin.

I’ve seen hawks swoop at flocks of robins behind my house before, but this was the first time I saw one with a kill.

It's almost winter, so all the hoopoes have gone south. Sad!

>>33644
I wish we had such ebin pirds here. I love their song.

>>33643
Yeah, I guess it makes sense he would eat fast, and then finish somewhere else. Thanks for the images. The hawks I come across are usually idle, just perched high and screeching, but when they strike they really do make a mess.
RIP robin.

>>33644

>hoopoes

Beautiful. I'm contiunally amazed by the variety of bird species in the world.

>>33647

>Thanks for the images.

I wish I had a better camera. Here's a video I managed to take just as he took off.

>>33659
I was just watching a documentary clip from PBS on how this guy used to expound the violent ape theory until it was relatively proven that our Australopithocine ancestors did not in fact form a highly vicious society of apex predators but had in fact been preyed on by numerous animals including birds of prey, at least on the younglings.

Yeah birds of prey tend to snatch and fly away away, sometimes after disabling in the ground sometimes not, to eat them elsewhere. Out in the country every once in awhile someone would lose their cat or small rat dog to an eagle or hawk. They're not terribly discriminating. They tend to pick off chickens too.

>>33646
I do live in a place where there's lots of african pirds that migrate here during summer

P-please visit Algarve, we have lots of birds even during the winter, cheap prices, too!

These last few weeks I've been seeing a lot of limpkins. Here's one I came across yesterday. As you can see, he didn't trust me and quickly flew off to another pond.
Prior to the that, I saw this Great Blue Heron. He looked really cold sitting in that water. It was just after sunrise, and the temperature was about 55°F(13C).

>>33932
Nice pics

>>33934
Thank you. Here's another one of the heron, with some cool lighting effects created by the sunrise.

Hey Ernst good news!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnZmSPVLsQI
The Kakapos are breeding!

Also the Hoiho hui bird is clearly inferior to the Kakapo
https://www.bing.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com%2fworld%2f2019%2f11%2f12%2fno-evidence-russian-interference-new-zealands-bird-year-contest%2f%3foutputType%3damp

>>34001
Wait oh fuck we're down to only 147 left on earth??
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/03/endangered-kapako-breeding-technology/
Well never mind then. Fuck. That is incredibly sad news indeed.

>In the hopes of more smiley faces getting wings and fewer getting Xs, a team of scientists, rangers, and volunteers are working around the clock during the current breeding season, using 3D-printed smart eggs, activity trackers, and a sperm-toting drone nicknamed the "cloaca courier" to turn a record breeding year into a repopulation milestone and help this beloved bird step back from the brink.

>At the core of the program this year are activity-tracking smart transmitters worn by every bird that loop around their wings like a backpack. Even without rangers spying in the woods, the system can report which kakapo have mated, with whom, and how vigorously, and sensors outside each nest send alerts when mothers come and go. Fertile eggs are removed from the nests and incubated in a dedicated room on each island to be hatched in captivity, while the mothers sit on 3D-printed smart eggs that make noise to prepare them for the return of fluff-ball chicks. Some hatchlings are being hand-reared to induce females to nest again this season.

>A project recently sequenced the genome of every kakapo, so Digby is also performing artificial inseminations, taking semen from genetically important males and using a drone affectionately called the “cloacal courier” to fly it across the island to waiting females. (The cloaca is the cavity at the end of the reproductive, digestive, and urinary tracts.)

>At night, workers camp near the nests, monitoring eggs, making nest renovations, and checking on vulnerable chicks. “We’re working days and nights at the moment,” says Digby. “When there’s only 147 adults, we have to be in this intensive care phase. We can’t afford to lose any more kakapo, and we need to make as many as we can.”

Well I hope that modern technology can help but honestly one would hope some kind of genomics program would be much more involved. You'd think we are nearing the time where we can bring back the wooly mammoth so why not try to go to any ends in order to save this bird?

I saw these Wood Storks feeding this morning. They wade through the water with their bills submerged like this, and when they feel a fish or other small prey their bills will snap shut. As you can see, they all stick close to each other as they sweep through the pond. Whatever fish are in there don't stand a chance.

>>35483
That one on the far right is my Crossout spirit animal

>fuck this I'm going over here to do my own thing
>hey stay away from me you cunts
>oh yeah how about I get all up in your shit huh how about that

>>35490
That one sort of reminds me of Moe from The 3 Stooges. He's just trying to get some breakfast, but has to tolerate the other storks because they're family :D.

I actually don't know if they stick together like that in order to hunt more effectively, or if they do it to stay safe from predators. Keeping their beaks close creates a larger web to catch prey, but it's also true that if they encounter an alligator it's better not to be the bird on the outside. So it's probably a little bit of both.

Here's a dark-eyed junco resting for a moment on the maple in my backyard. This was taken right before dusk: the junco flock tends to show up at the feeder around this time of day.

>>35501
Have you noticed any changes at the feeder as we move into winter? Are more birds showing up as other sources of food disappear?

>>35511
>>35511
It’s hard to say whether activity has been trending up on account of the winter or because my feeder is a relatively new source of food (I got the SquirrelBuster in late September and the suet cage shortly after). Either way, I’ve certainly noticed more activity, although I do not keep the sort of records I’d need to quantify this. For instance a mated pair of house finches has been showing up regularly for weeks, as well as a flock of juncos. The Carolina wrens come by more often now too. I intend to buy a roosting box for them soon.

The pic of the female downy woodpecker is from a few minutes ago btw. She was trying to grab some suet before the storm I think.

>>35512
Great pics; it's nice to see your feeders in action. Good luck with the roosting box. After that cozy addition, you will definitely be a pird oligarch :D.

>female downy woodpecker

Very cool bird. I still hear a woodpecker regularly tapping away in the woods, but have yet to properly identify his species by sight. It's the steady drum beat tapping that I'm pretty sure is a warning for other birds to stay away from his territory. Nevertheless, if he doesn't come out to the trees near the road, I'm going to have to go in there and solve this mystery :D.

>>35521
>>35521
I wrote a long reply yesterday but it got wiped out by the captcha so here goes attempt 2:

I hope your woodpecker reveals himself soon. Maybe it would help if you tried listening to recorded calls of common North American woodpeckers. Red-bellied woodpeckers in particular have very distinctive vocalizations.

Yes, I hope the wrens take to the roosting box. They’ve quickly become some of my favorite birds with their wary little hops and that bobbing dance they do.

Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed the photos. These pics were all taken through my spotting scope with my phone. Hopefully someday I will own a real camera but until then this technique does the trick.

new pird spotted

>>35554

>listening to recorded calls of common North American woodpeckers

After going through the library on Allaboutbirds, I'm 75% sure it's a Downy Woodpecker. The drumming matches, and I know I've also heard that call before.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Downy_Woodpecker/sounds

>>35557
Man, what a nice shot d(￣◇￣)b. The spotting scope is a great trick. Are there pepper flakes in that suet?

>>35554
I was actually able to record some audio of that bird this morning. As I heard it, I remembered "Hey, you know that mp3 player you're listening to? It aslo has a voice recorder" So I figured, why try to analyse it on-the-spot, when I can take a sample back to the lab :DD. Now I'm certain it's not a Downy Woopecker, because the call is way off.(I must have heard that somewhere else). After toggling back and forth between sound clips, I now believe it's a Pileated Woodpecker. Of course my identification/guess assumes that both the drumming and vocalization I'm hearing are from the same bird. It's also possible there's another unknown bird making the call and confusing everything. I don't think that's the case, though.
The first recording has drumming at 2 and 27 seconds, and a call at 17 seconds. The second recording has two calls. I had to amplify these quite a bit on Audacity, but luckily the noise reduction filter took out most of the static.
For comparison:
https://www.almanac.com/content/bird-sounds-pileated-woodpecker#
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pileated_Woodpecker/sounds

>>35561

>Man, what a nice shot d(￣◇￣)b. The spotting scope is a great trick. Are there pepper flakes in that suet?

Thank you. No pepper flakes yet: I'll have to order the pepper suet cakes online when I get around to it. The cake that's in the cage in the photo is just regular beef suet from Tractor Supply Co.

>>35614
Very nice recordings. I think you're right: it sounds like a pileated woodpecker. Hopefully he will reveal himself sooner rather than later. Would make for a great photo.

Is that a Carolina wren in the middle of the first recording? Such a noisy little bird.

>>35615
When he pokes his head out, I'll be sure to post pics. If I don't have a camera, I'll do my best to paint a vivid picture with colorful adjectives :D.

>in the middle of the first recording

Yeah, I think you're right. The vocalizations at 12, 18, and 24 seconds sound like a Carolina Wren. I know you've been seeing a lot of these guys, but that's still a really good ear.

Red bellied woodpecker came for dinner again today. This is the first time I've been able to photograph him.

>>35636
You may notice the suet cage is now hanging from a cable rather than a chain. This is because the lardass squirrel broke the chain :DDDDD

>>35636
Another great picture; woodpeckers really do love suet. btw, how strong is your spotting scope? My best magnifier is a point-and-shoot camera with 3x optical zoom. With that, I took this picture of a Northern Mockingbird from about 15 feet away(including tree height). The resolution and detail are decent enough, and I mainly need to worry about proper lighting and a steady hand. Getting even closer is possible too, in rare circumstances. Like when the stars align, and an immature Yellow Warbler decides to perch a mere 2 feet in front of me-tilting it's head and demanding to be photographed. Of course when something that unlikely happens, you can be sure I'll misalign the camera frame :D.

>>35659
Try to find a used Lumix DCTZ202. It is small, has 15x and a 1" sensor.

New bird in the yard this morning: juvenile yellow-bellied sapsucker. Red-bellied woodpecker (male, juvenile) and downy woodpecker (male, adult) were also here, as well as a flock of juncos, our resident Carolina wren, and a pair of Carolina chickadees. Two male house finches were fighting over access to the SquirrelBuster. The free sample of Bark Butter I smeared on the suet cage yesterday has quickly become popular with the wrens and woodpeckers.

>>35659
I enjoy the lighting on the mockingbird in that picture. And regarding the warbler, at least you got a decent shot of the rear half.

My scope is a 30x Bausch&Lomb that my dad bought second-hand at an auction.

>>35915
Have you noticed a massive drop in the number of birds around? Because both the quantity of members and diversity of species I have seen drop since childhood pretty drastically.

>>35930
Tbh it’s hard to say because I never paid much attention to birds until this year. As a child I knew what cardinals, blue jays and robins were, but that was pretty much it.

>>35915

>The free sample of Bark Butter I smeared on the suet cage yesterday has quickly become popular with the wrens and woodpeckers.

Free samples are the most ingenious marketing tactic ever devised :D. Do you think you'll end up buying more? Or maybe making some?

>>35916

>at least you got a decent shot of the rear half.

True. If I had been off one more degree, I would have missed him entirely.

I saw a woodpecker today, but amazingly it wasn't the Pileated Woodpecker I've been stalking. This was a Red-Bellied Woodpecker(like this >>35636), and I came across him ~50 yards from my front door. Since I didn't have a camera, I very politely asked him to stay put, and raced to get one. Pics are the result. Getting a good angle was tricky because he was hopping around, keeping the branches and leaves between us. My best opportunity was, once again, ruined by poor framing(pic 2). Although I actually like how that one turned out, so I decided not to do any cropping. It seems kind of artistic.

>>35930

>According to research published Sept. 19 by the journal Science, the total breeding bird population in the continental U.S. and Canada has dropped by 29 percent since [1970].

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/09/nearly-30-birds-us-canada-have-vanished-1970

I can't say that I've noticed a change, but the people who do the counting have.

Some Australian Magpies mimicing sirens. The first video is the one which has been in the news these past few days, because he's mimicing a fire truck. The others are similar examples of this behavior, where the birds are mimicing police sirens and car alarms.

They're very cool birds, but also very territorial. They can guard the same small patch of land for decades.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/offtrack/the-secret-life-of-australias-marvellous-magpies/6750736

I think this may be the mate of my Carolina wren. I hope they nest in the roosting/nesting box I set up this year and not inside a lawn tractor or something.

>>37037
Have you noticed any activity near the roosting box yet?

I saw a barred owl this morning. He(?) was perched at the top of a tree, before being chased off by crows. Luckily, he decided to fly in my direction and landed on a limb about 50 feet from the sidewalk. He remained there for several minutes, sporadically hooting, which allowed me to get a good look at him(well, as good as you can hope for under a tree canopy in the early dawn light). They're surprisingly large birds, and I could clearly see him jutting his head and neck out as he vocalized. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera, but was able to capture some audio. There were at least two barred owls in the area, as I could hear one call in the distance, before this owl would respond. The attached mp3 is my best sample of this. You can also hear those crows, and what I'm pretty sure is a wren.

The Barred Owl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf1j8nYtl24

Barred Owl Pair Calling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdkhMZZvdgc

I kind of feel sad not posting in this thread. I love birds and love to observe them, but with my phone and skills I can't het hood photo of them. For example right in front of my window Crows made a Stash in snow on tree and reguallry visiting it. But I don't go close to window or try to remove tulle in fear of scare them, so I can't make proper photo.
Or for example now, on road to an airport which is quite far from city in forest I seen this bird. I seen them in city once year or two ago, this is clearly not Fieldfare since it bigger, fattier and have different colors overall, but it also like to eat Sorbus berries since it what he did while I tried to photo him on mine crappy Samsung galaxy s4 camera. Can't get better pic of it, thought he or she obviously was not scared of me - but snow there was too deep and there was -30C with humidity and wind so yea, don't wanted to spend much time here with naked hands holding phone.

>>37296
Thanks for braving the cold and snow to get this picture. That bird really does look plump, which makes it more difficult to identify his species. Each time I find a candidate with the correct markings, the size doesn't quite match. For a minute I thought it could be either a Redwing, or a Dusky Thrush, but those species are too small.
Well, even though they didn't provide an answer in this case, these sites are still really good for identifying birds:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/browse/
http://linnut.luontoportti.fi/index.phtml?lang=en
https://search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog

Some birds spotted behind a strip mall on a Sunday morning: a wood stork, a pair or mottled ducks, and a few which I can't identify. Since they look like ducks, and are black, they're probably american black ducks. There is also a small chance they are some type of cormorant. Additional information: I did see either an anhinga or a cormorant swimming underwater, and following his course led me to this group. It's too bad they took flight so quickly.

I’ve noticed several pairs of Eastern bluebirds visiting my yard in the afternoon lately. They seem to be checking out the nest box (actually it’s convertible roost box / nest box—I’ll need to switch it over soon I think).

>>37841
Whoops, looks like I uploaded the preening picture twice. My bad.

>>37296
Nice pic. Thanks for braving the cold to share it with us. Regarding identification, I have no idea what it might be.

>>37507
Neat. I don’t think I’ve seen American black ducks IRL yet (or if I have, I haven’t noticed).

>>37841
>>37842
You took some great shots of those bluebirds, and it was nice to see that the box has been getting some attention.

>>37684
I have an update on these birds >>37507, and it seems they're not American black ducks after all(so I guess neither of us has spotted those, yet). I went back to the same spot as before but, knowing they were shy, approached slowly, hoping they would be there again. Sure enough, they were- and they didn't fly away this time. I was able to observe them clearly for quite a while, and can now identify them as double-crested cormorants. I took some more pictues, but they don't show up very well agaist the dark water(not to mention how far away I was). The videos turned out a bit better. I even managed to capture them diving underwater-hope you don't mind my shaky camera work on that one.

Direct to you from Ernst's front yard. Can you spot the two (2) frogmouths?