Lisa
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LisaParticipantSitting in my back yard around 6:00 p.m. and observing my yard and an open behind it, I saw grackles, house sparrows, Inca and whitewing doves, some kind of flycatcher (ash-throated and Great crested, couldn't tell), a hummingbird (I think buff-bellied), and two mockingbirds that were...doing a mating dance? Not sure; I've never seen that behavior before. Usually if I see two mockingbirds, one is trying to drive off the other. These two were on the ground doing what looked like a Mexican hat dance, sort of circling and doing a tapping step. Also I could hear a killdeer, a mourning dove, a kiskadee, and some kind of oriole (I think). Looking at eBird for this month for my county was pretty amazing. I was surprised at the number of birds I associate with water, ducks, for instance. We don't have a lot of large water features in our county, besides the Rio Grande, but I know there are small ponds and lakes on private ranches, and irrigation canals, and I guess collectively they offer more water resources than I realized.in reply to: Activities: Local Bird Exploration #697817
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LisaParticipant1. We have a lot of grey- or dun-colored birds in our neighborhood, including three different kinds of doves (whitening, mourning, Inca), all of which are easy to tell apart from the chachalaca, which to me has a shape that is sort of a cross between a chicken and a miniature dinosaur! All are often on the ground, but even in dim light the shape, size--and the weird call--make the chachalaca easy to pick out. 3. In my back yard this morning, I saw two different feeding strategies. A number of birds came to the feeders to eat seed, and a male grackle caught a small frog that he was repeatedly dunking in the birdbath!in reply to: Activities: Bird ID Practice #696422
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LisaParticipantI have two questions that maybe someone can answer (or will be answered in future segments). Do the bird groupings presented in this first lesson (e.g. songbirds vs. chicken-like birds, or the various groupings within songbirds) all correspond exactly to some level of taxonomy (e.g. family, genus), or do they cross taxonomies and represent more a convenient learning tool? Also, I see on the Wall of Birds some families that have representatives in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres (e.g. cranes), but some only in one hemisphere (e.g. hummingbirds). Which is the more common situation for bird families--one or both hemispheres? Well, and related to that--why do families exist in both hemispheres? Did they have a common ancestor before continental drift? And, those bird of paradise were the coolest, freakiest-looking creatures I have ever seen! Haven't got any photos to share but saw a bird new to me this morning, a Great Crested Flycatcher. AllAboutBirds helped me identify it with their sound recordings!in reply to: Activities: Exploring Birds #694568
Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)