Forum Role: Participant
Active Since: May 23, 2020
Topics Started: 0
Replies Created: 6

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Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Theresa
    Participant
    The other morning when I was out running I stopped to watch 4 egrets in a pond in my neighborhood.  A couple of them were wading, presumably hunting, and the other two were taking turns hopping up, flying down to the other end of the pond and looping back to where they started.  One would hop up and fly away and the other would follow.  Not sure if they were playing or if it was a territory thing.  One of them did a little vocalizing on one of his loops and let's just say he's not the singer that some of the birds in the Birdsong topic were....more of a croak than a song.   Red-tailed hawks are very common around here and I always get a strange sort of kick out of seeing them get mobbed...the "mobbers" really don't hold back.  The other night I saw a hawk getting mobbed and it even looked like one of the smaller birds (couldn't tell what they were) clipped him.  Must be a real rush for the little guys.  ;)
  • Theresa
    Participant
    Activity 2: Year-round versus part-time residents.  According to eBird, three species I can expect to see year-round in my area are cardinals, mallard ducks, and great blue herons.  Of those three, I have only seen cardinals and mallards in the winter months; I would be beyond shocked to see a heron in the winter, especially since many of the ponds where I usually see them in summer are small enough to at least partially freeze in the winter.  Some of the species listed as part-timers are much less surprising, like ruby-throated hummingbirds, green herons, and juncos.  I've see the first two of those only in the warmest summer months, and the junco only once or twice in very late winter/early spring.  Something I'm learning as I go along is that there are no hard and fast windows or "deadlines" beyond which you will or won't see a particular bird, there are always stragglers. Activity 4: expected birds at my favorite spot.  Was out there this morning and saw 10 times the number of red-winged blackbirds that I saw of anything else.  :P  I wasn't expecting a huge variety but I wasn't expecting so little diversity either.  In 6 months the blackbirds will probably have gone but the Canada geese and possibly mallards will still be hanging around.  Anything else I see besides sparrows will be a nice bonus; according to Merlin there are about 65 species I might see in my location on December 22, so I'll definitely be on the lookout!
  • Theresa
    Participant
    I've been using Merlin for a while but never utilized the "most likely" feature in Explore Birds.  Tested it out the other night and it is awesome.  I wasn't shocked by the birds at the top of the list--robin, grackle, starling, mourning dove, redwinged blackbird, house sparrow, cardinal--and I think I saw all of them when I went for a walk that evening.  One bird that was just outside the top 10 on the list was brown-headed cowbird, which I've seen in my area but not consistently.  Voila, what do you supposed landed right in my path that very evening, just a few feet away?  :D  Was so tickled to see it.  "Most Likely" will definitely be my default setting in Merlin from now on. It's also interesting that in just a few days, the birds a little further down the list have changed position significantly...according to Merlin, in the next week or so I need to be looking out for bobolinks and meadowlarks in my area, two birds I never would have bothered to look for before.  Just have to find a birding Hot Spot with an open field....      
  • Theresa
    Participant
    Took me forever to be able to tell starlings and grackles apart!  I usually look at their tails: STarlings have STumpy tails and GRackles have GRand tails.  :)
  • Theresa
    Participant
    Activity 1: birds I can ID by their shape.  Mourning doves have a distinctive shape especially when compared to the many finches and sparrows commonly seen in my neighborhood; their long tails and small heads are their most recognizable features.  On the other hand, a robin is much more proportionate; its tail is neither long nor stumpy, and its head looks like the right size for its body. Activity 4: describing a favorite bird using mulitple strategies.  A red-winged blackbird looks like what it's called: solid glossy black overall, with a squarish patch of red on its "shoulder" or the top of its wing.  I always think of it as an epaulet.  :)  It's around the size of a robin.  I see and hear them in areas where different habitats come together, for instance on the edges of a field or meadow that's bordered by trees, or in the tall grass in and around ponds or wetlands.  The males are often out and about while the females stay undercover.  It took me forever to figure out that the small brown birds darting through the high grass around the pond in a favorite local park are not sparrows but female redwinged blackbirds.  Their song is somehow both shrill and guttural, and I've seen it phoneticized in field guides as "kon-ka-REE," but recently I realized it also sounds uncomfortably like "quart-an-TINE," lol.  My favorite thing about their song is when I can hear multiple birds calling and responding to one another, for instance when I'm walking down a long straight path and I can hear them "telegraphing" to one another up and down the path.
  • Theresa
    Participant
    Activity 3--favorites in my neighborhood. I never get tired of seeing great egrets in the ponds of my neighborhood.  I associate them with early morning not only because that's when I usually see them but because they seem to match the still and calm of that time of day.  So slender and elegant, and so very bright white.  They're very zen.  :)  Another favorite that I often see in the same environment is the tree swallow.  They're so much fun to watch--they dart, they circle, they buzz the surface of the water.  If the light's not right, it's hard to see their beautiful color, but their head and shoulders are brilliantly blue and their fronts are gleaming white. Honestly, though, almost any bird can be my favorite at the moment that I see it or hear it, especially when it's unexpected or when it's something I haven't encountered before.  :)
Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)