Migration season has inspired me to start up a thread where like-minded birders (or the bird-curious) can share and discuss all things avian.
I’ll kick it off: I really just started giving a crap about birds during quarantine when, out of pure boredom, I bought a few feeders to put out in my very small yard here in Brooklyn. My work-from-home desk is located in a place where I can check what’s going out there from time to time and snap a few pics through a set of crappy binoculars (see below). I downloaded the wonderful Merlin App and have been able to spot and identify nearly 100 types of birds in the last year and a half with it and some help from an avid birder friend.
Anyways here is a picture of a lovely Ovenbird that visited the yard last week (I need to get a real camera). Haven’t seen him since so he likely kept moving South. Hopefully I’ll have some more travelers come visit soon.
I was out fly fishing on the local trout river over the weekend. I was wading around a bed and came upon this great blue heron just holding court on a fallen tree in the middle of the river.
Glad you had the balls to bring this subject to the fore. If you spend a few minutes away from the noise and pay attention to what’s going on around you, birds are fascinating. A couple of weeks ago, we were standing under a 100’ Beech tree shading our deck. All of a sudden, there were 100s of birds going absolutely crazy in the canopy. Beech nuts started falling like hail and we observed this crazy phenomenon under cover for 10 minutes. Absolutely incredible maylay. It occurred to us that at that very moment, the beech nuts must have been just perfect for the taking. Not 5 minutes before…not 5 minutes later. Then all of a sudden it was over. Crazy how nature works and they communicate.
The Feather Thief is also interesting, especially if interested in fly fishing and natural history. Also recommend the memoir H is for Hawk, which is a bit of a serious memoir but is very very good and bird-related.
Love watching and listening for the cardinals and blue jays in our yard.
Here he (or one of his friends) is a couple of months prior going to town on a mouse in a raging ice storm that, hours later would ravage our house and much of OKC like three days before our wedding. Should have been an omen or something!
On the first question, no. This trip was my wife’s bucket list trip (not that I had to be dragged along kicking and screaming). I had designs on playing one of the clubs in Nairobi to say I did, but decided to try being less selfish for a change.
On the second question, not even close. I’m the Allen Iverson of photography. . . take lots of shots and hope I make a few. One day I took about 500 photos, and had already deleted them down to 200 by the time we returned to camp. After further vetting, I had 24 usable pics that day. In the case of the pelicans, they were swimming along diving and coming up in unison (awesome to see!) and I must have taken 20 pics to get the one above. Thank goodness for digital photography.
I’ve never been a huge bird (or Bird) guy, but found myself fascinated with the many species I saw there.
[I am particularly proud of the Egyptian Geese picture as that was totally uncropped.]
I remember going to Audobon meetings with my Mom as a kid.
My twin brother is a big birder. Lifetime count, annual count, county count, etc.
I don’t have any pics, because by the time I try to get my camera out, they are gone. But I have a little streak of seeing a red headed woodpecker each time I’m on the golf course.
The most recent time was at Vibestock @ LongLeaf. I couldn’t be for certain, but it had too much black and just enough white to be anything else. So, I’m saying the streak lives on!
And I saw this at Pinehurst # 1. Pretty cool stuff.
Blue-headed Vireo that visited the backyard earlier today on it’s way to warmer climates. A lifer for me as it only passes through these parts in the Fall and Spring. Pretty excited to see this guy.
Big Hawk (Probably a Red Tailed but possibly a Coopers that comes by from time to time) perched on the big apartment building that overlooks all the backyards here:
Love spotting a good brown thrasher. Always scavenging around on the ground; and they always make me do a double take.
“Dang that’s a decent size bird on the ground.” Then I realize it’s a thrasher.
Just finished “What the Robin Knows”. Can’t recommend this book more highly…thanks for the heads up. I have literally become a tracker…completely aware of what’s going on around me. The birds gave us a heads up on a fox last night, we scoped a fox on the course today…it’s like a whole new world.
My brother got a good pic today.
This is a rare one for Mason County, West Virginia.
It was spotted a few days ago. He decided to get up before work and make the hour + drive; it was still in the same spot.
The owl is just hanging out at a farm area.
Read “What the Robin Knows”…thanks for the recommendation. Last week the strangest thing happened. I was looking out the window and all of a sudden there was a tremendous swarm of birds…1000s…all seemingly feeding in something that miraculously appeared in our yard. It’s too bad we can’t share video on this thread ( or I just don’t know how). In any case, there was this violent feeding going on for about 30 seconds, and then…woosh! All of them simultaneously flew off in a snap. It was about 45 degrees and can only assume there was some hatch or ant movement that only the birds caught on to. Crazy that in that moment and environmental timing, only that could happen. Here is a snap from the video when they all flew off in unison. Nature is nuts and we almost never notice.
