. . . birding, photography and living with pet birds . . .
Jul 10th, 2010 by Elizabeth
My membership to the Red Butte Garden came in the mail today.
It’s completely worth it too. The first time I visited I got great pictures of a bird I’d only recently seen. The second time at the gardens, I saw a new bird: the Bullock’s Oriole.
Orioles are very common this time of year.
You can attract orioles by putting out cut oranges or jelly. I’ve been considering doing this but I’m hesitant to put out something that might attract bugs.
For now, they’ll have to keep hunting for caterpillars.
This video has convinced me that I need to buy a birdbath and a Wingscapes BirdCam immediately! The video shows five owls just hanging out in a birdbath. I want owls, all I’m missing is the birdbath!
Jul 7th, 2010 by Elizabeth
Do you see this face on the left? He thinks he’s sooo innocent!
Conner likes to tap on boxes very early in the morning, especially on weekends. His favorite activity is tapping on the boxes to push them over so they make a loud crash. But I’ve figured out a solution. I pierced holes in the bottom of a tissue box and affixed the box to the cage with plastic ties.
Then to make the box more exciting, I stuck a soda can inside.
It’s not nearly as exciting for Conner now that he can’t move the box. I hope he goes back to chewing it. Crazy bird, he’s more interested in doing naughty things like chewing books and pushing boxes over the cage.
Jul 6th, 2010 by Elizabeth
Fruit is so delicious.
Especially when you’re a baby robin.
And you’re not going to wait for the low hanging fruit to ripen. You want it now!
So you look and stretch
for that perfect piece
but sometimes
it’s just too far
and then he fell
Jul 5th, 2010 by Elizabeth
I’m completely puzzled by this. Someone found this blog by using the search terms “utah city escorts blogs.” Boy did you come to the wrong place!
Jul 4th, 2010 by Elizabeth
I’ve come to the conclusion that Heber City is the best place in the world for birding. I saw my first Common Nighthawk.
They’re very different looking birds. Their beaks are very tiny but they can open the beaks extremely wide. Checkout his nose hole.
I still can’t believe I saw him! Even better, I saw two of them!!! I’ve seen pictures of them before, but you don’t get a sense for their smallness until you see one in person. They’re smaller than cockatiels (although puffier).
Common Nighthawks sleep during the day, but they always have that sleepy look (except juveniles).
Now my next task is to get one catching insects!
Jul 3rd, 2010 by Elizabeth
Last weekend I visited the Red Butte Gardens. It’s only 3.5 miles from the house and has a variety of flowers. The views are not terribly lush, but that’s to be expected since the gardens are in the driest part of town.
The gardens, however, are full of birds and bunnies! Very hungry looking bunnies.
I got some great shots of a Black-Headed Grosbeak. There are many types of grosbeaks. Birdchick has a beautiful picture of a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak. Utah is supposed to have them but so far I’ve only seen Black-Headed Grosbeaks.
The first time I ever saw a grosbeak was at my feeders. He was terribly shy and so I could only get pictures through the glass. Grosbeaks prefer forests, so they were a lot more comfortable with me in their space. His breast is puffy in this picture because he was singing.
Black-Headed Grosbeaks are sometimes confused with Spotted Towhees. In performing an identification, make sure you look at the eyes. Spotted Towhees have red eyes.
Black-Headed Grosbeaks have a lovely song. I’m embarrassed to write that I thought I was listening to a House Finch singing until a saw the bird. I’ve been listening to the Stokes bird identification tracks, but they’re not sinking in yet. I can identify almost any track from the 1990’s based on four bars of music, but not these bird tracks. All that talent wasted on crappy alternative music.
Grosbeak refers to the large beak of a group of seed-eating passerines, i.e. songbirds. You can really see in the above picture that their beaks look disproportionately large compared to other songbirds. See, for example, a House Sparrow.
Now compare the female Black-Headed Grosbeak to the House Sparrow. If it weren’t for that beak, you could easily confuse the grosbeak for a sparrow, right?
I mean, checkout her crown.
It’s pretty similar to a white-crowned sparrow.
So watch the beak!
Jun 30th, 2010 by Elizabeth
So, you remember how I was growing plants indoors? Well, I transplanted them and most of them died. I guess I needed to grow them inside longer so the root structure is more stable. Currently there are two peppers and one sad looking artichoke from that initial planting. Here’s one of the peppers, little trooper.
Next year I might try planting things indoors again in January! But you can buy plants that are six inches high for only $3, so it hardly seems worth the effort to grow them myself. Eventually I will develop more of a sense of pride for producing my own garden and reducing my carbon footprint but for this year, it was nice to be able to buy tomatoes and peppers from Lowes. The tomato plants are already making cherry tomatoes!
Here’s the tomato and basil bed. Doesn’t it look great?
The replanted pepper and artichoke bed is below. I put in basil, a red bell pepper, a green bell pepper and a jalapeno pepper. You can see the popsicle sticks in the back from the original plantings, looking like plant grave markers.
The summer squash bed is doing pretty well. Two crooked neck squash are doing great and one zucchini is doing great (zucchini are a subset of the summer squash family so I can call them the same thing). At first I thought some were suffering due to lack of water but I’ve been watering the beds consistently now with no change. Here is a struggling one:
And here’s the bed:
I can’t wait for the harvest.
Jun 29th, 2010 by Elizabeth
I haven’t mentioned this before, but I am a patent attorney. I also prosecute trademarks and do the occasional copyright work. So imagine my excitement when I was reviewing a daily list of recent IP lawsuits and I found a copyright infringement case involving the iBird iPhone application!
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According to the complaint, Martin Stewart (doing business as Naturesound.org) created 3,500 nature sounds that are subject to federal copyright. Mitch Waite, the developer of iBird was in talks with Stewart to license the sounds but the talks fell apart. Even though Mitch Waite didn’t obtain a license, he used the sounds in the iBird application. I don’t have to write “allegedly used” because if you look at the iPhone app, Martin Stewart is listed as the recordist. Apple is named in the lawsuit because they included iBird in promotional materials.
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This use of copyrighted materials is pretty blatant. I will be watching closely to see whether Mitch Waite has any interesting defenses.
Jun 27th, 2010 by Elizabeth
In Farmington Bay, it would be a mistake to only look in the water for birds.
Although you can find many birds in the water, including the occasional Yellow-Headed Blackbird,
the real action is in the grass
This is a male Yellow-Headed Blackbird. Check out his song, it sounds to me like a collision of large mechanical objects.
and these are females
Female blackbirds are always brown, but this is the first type I’ve come across that also includes the color in the name. For example, the female Red-Winged Blackbird has no red. Yellow-Headed Blackbirds appear in Utah around March and they stay visible all summer.
The first time I saw one was when we lived in California. I had opened the curtains in the living room and on top of this bright green plant was a yellow bird trying to eat buds off the plant. It was amazing! I had never seen a large native bird with such startling colors. Being a blackbird, these guys are seriously unappreciated by the birding community, but I’m always excited to see them. They make any scene look better. I leave you with a picture of Yellow-Headed Blackbirds from Deseret Ranch:
