Ornithamateurs - The Birding Thread

[Blue]

Meet Crocoduck

https://8bitskeptic.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/crocoduck.jpg

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[Collar_N_Cuffs]

I do love out barn swallows so
And now that you mention it, I don't think I have ever seen a tired bird unless it's in major distress.

 

[krissive69]

the ospreys are back!

 

[Blue]

Came across this picture, thought it would be well appreciated here:

http://www.tehcute.com/pics/201110/duckling-and-baby-owl-big.jpg

 

[AbsintheFather]

Yay on the swallows. Haven't seen them up here yet.

However last week the orioles arrived right on time. It's always the first week in May. The geese have hatched on the pond and the two nests yielded 10 babies.

I also saw something very interesting this morning. There were turkeys walking across the yard who apparently got too close to a Red-Winged Blackbird's nest because the red-wing began dive bombing the two Tom's who flapped their big wings at it, but basically just kept walking.

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[AbsintheFather]

As well as a bigger standard garden feeder, we have a couple of the tiny Perspex feeders that stick to the outside of Windows.

http://i1240.photobucket.com/albums/gg491/onceuponatimetherewasapicture/garden2016/ed17f33c4865e55ffd76baa353cfcd0b_zpsrx5bheue.jpg

This one is on one of my kitchen Windows. It's very popular with the small birds. This is a replacement one after a hefty pigeon came and broke the first one ( which I preferred, it was all Perspex and less obstructive) . It's also really handy for popping out with things too insignificant to give my birds, tiny crumbs and so on. My cooker is maybe...two and a half metres from the window, at the most. In an eye line view, through a glazed door, I have another on a window on my utility window. Interestingly I think tits and robins prefer the kitchen, and the hedge sparrows the utility one. But the shy hedge sparrows prefer really the main feeder, and best of all the floor underneath it when some other bird has left seeds on the ground.

That's a very nice looking feeder - It looks like you keep both dried worms and suet in it. Do you you put different foods in each feeder to attract different birds?

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[seela]

I'll just leave this little thing here. Nightingale, I think, but I know very little about birds, so...

 

[Netzach]

Came across this picture, thought it would be well appreciated here:

http://www.tehcute.com/pics/201110/duckling-and-baby-owl-big.jpg

I foresee the plot of Disney's saddest ever movie ever.

 

[Collar_N_Cuffs]

I'll just leave this little thing here. Nightingale, I think, but I know very little about birds, so...

That's lovely, seela
Were you out mushroom picking? I'm picturing a lovely wooded area, full of hen of the woods!

I foresee the plot of Disney's saddest ever movie ever.

Hah!

 

[seela]

That's lovely, seela
Were you out mushroom picking? I'm picturing a lovely wooded area, full of hen of the woods!

Just checking if the lilies of the valley are in bloom already. They weren't, but soon they will.

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[Blue]

In keeping with the trend of sad bird deaths;
Two weeks ago I saw a bird by the side of the road without a head. It hadn't been crushed by a car, nor eviscerated by an animal, it had no blood on it and all its feathers were smooth and in pristine condition and the lack of necrosis meant it can't have been there for more than a few hours. I would have assumed it was either unconscious or sleeping precariously if it weren't lacking its head from the shoulders-up.

Occam's razor states that somebody cut its head off, seemingly very unlikely but it's difficult to imagine its head being cleanly torn off by a car wheel. Spooky.

 

[Collar_N_Cuffs]

I saw a magpie run over today. I was not sure whether it was appropriate or not to chant the ward against bad luck for a lone magpie when it was dead. I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it for someone not too superstitious ( but a little ritualistic).

Let's hear the chant?
We don't have them, so I know nothing of magpies.

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[AbsintheFather]

and in more positive news . . . so many birds have now arrived, orioles, grossbeaks, bluebirds, cedar waxwings, hummingbirds - the feeders are very busy

 

[Collar_N_Cuffs]

One is meant to say 'hello mr magpie, say hello to Mrs magpie' and salute . But G messed with it, through delight and confusion and so we have to say something including its extended family and doing some sort of secret handshake almost ( I actually never did this silliness before him, he picked it up from someone at his university...)


It is all because one mGpie is meant to bring sorrow...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_Sorrow_(nursery_rhyme)

Oooohhh! I love this! And G's silliness. Delightful!
Oops. I don't think I'm approaching the gravity of the situation correctly

and in more positive news . . . so many birds have now arrived, orioles, grossbeaks, bluebirds, cedar waxwings, hummingbirds - the feeders are very busy

Lucky you! Because of the warm weather year round, you see pretty much the same birds here day in and day out

 

[Blue]

Maybe running over a magpie brings 14 years bad luck so the driver of the culprit vehicle is currently drinking themselves to death, their spouse has left them and they spontaneously fell into crippling debt?

 

[LallyH]

Hubby always waves at a lone magpie, or any group of magpies that are an odd number (ergo one of them must be a lone one...). Something he picked up in childhood apparently as a city boy. I grew up in the country where magpies were simply viewed as problems . I was very upset once as a child when I saw a dead one nailed to a fence by a farmer so I took it down and buried it under an oak tree.

 

[Collar_N_Cuffs]

Hubby always waves at a lone magpie, or any group of magpies that are an odd number (ergo one of them must be a lone one...). Something he picked up in childhood apparently as a city boy. I grew up in the country where magpies were simply viewed as problems . I was very upset once as a child when I saw a dead one nailed to a fence by a farmer so I took it down and buried it under an oak tree.

Traumatic!
Magpies should be waving at you!

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[seela]

They are quite smart little birdy chaps in their black and white suits. The only thing is.....they all look masculinE to me.

That's interesting, because to me they all look feminine. That's probably because when I was a kid, I for some reason thought hooded crows and magpies are the same bird, but hooded crows are boys and magpies are girls.

Similarly I thought that dogs and cats are the same animal: dogs are boys and cats are girls.

I was a weird kid. And talk about a major mind explosion when my uncle got a cat that wasn't a girl. It did not compute.


Also, last night was the first of the year we slept with the window cracked open. I woke up at four to nightingales (I think, still not sure) chirping away. Definitely more pleasant than waking up to trams clonking, like usually happens when we leave the window open.

 

[AbsintheFather]

http://66.media.tumblr.com/5809ac192df596c925a85b66c8090f5c/tumblr_nvc1aq4XdB1uflx2ho1_500.gif