birding, photography and living with pet birds
Dec 12th, 2011 by Elizabeth
In an attempt to make us healthier meals, Jon bought a rice cooker. It’s a wonderful object for making rice and other grains, even oatmeal! But most relevant to the birds, Jon made the birds a special mix of rice, lentils, quinoa and peas. The birds loved it!
I call it the rice beard.
Dec 10th, 2011 by Elizabeth
During our trip to Arizona, our guide Matt Brown took us into the mountains near Fort Huachuca. The trip up was nerve wracking because the turns were tight and the elevation was very high. The view from the top was pretty spectacular.
Up in the mountains is the American Redstart. They require an elevation between 5,000 and 8,000 feet.
I never got any fantastic pictures, but you get the idea. The redstart is a type of warbler, a bit more flashy than you usually see. He has a white bottom eye ring, which is very obvious in this picture:
I didn’t witness this, but redstarts eat insects and will flush them out by flashing the white patches on their wings.
They nest on the ground, which is hard to imagine considering how much they liked being high up in my experience. It took a very long time to get these pictures because they’re such nervous and secretive birds.
Dec 9th, 2011 by Elizabeth
I’ve seen a lot of Pine Siskins over the past year. They travel in flocks so I don’t see them often, but when I do see them it’s in a flurry of activity. This picture was taken at my feeder.
You can tell that they’re siskins and not female House Finches, by the yellow wing bar. I also know when they’re around because of the sound they make. The middle of the track in this link includes a very distinctive call they make. Here’s a female House Finch for comparison:
We saw a ton of Pine Siskins in Arizona. They really like the nyger seed that the goldfinches also go crazy for.
Even better, this summer I saw baby Pine Siskins in Heber City.
I love seeing babies.
Dec 4th, 2011 by Elizabeth
Mockingbirds are so funny. There is a mockingbird that owns a tree in my father-in-law’s yard. He was in the exact same spot last year.
Mockingbirds are extremely possessive of their territory.
I watched two mockingbirds fight with each other.
They were growling at each other.
They were completely engaged in fighting until the real battle became clear, the cardinal:
They were determined to keep the cardinal out of the designated trees. This appears to be a universal (at least in SC) mockingbird vs. cardinal action because the same thing happened at Ninety Six. This guy
was determined to remove this cardinal
So watch out cardinals, you’ve been warned.
Dec 3rd, 2011 by Elizabeth
The best place for birding in South Carolina as far as I’m concerned is at Ninety Six National Historic Site. The area is beautiful.
The site commemorates the town’s participation in the Revolutionary War. It includes a log cabin, a cannon and trenches that the Patriots used to get water without getting shot.
The field is completely surrounded by forest that was chock full of birds. The most abundant bird was the robin. Robins were everywhere!
They especially liked these bushes with red berries. I tried to identify them, but there are a lot of red-berried trees in the world, even when you narrow it down to South Carolina.
We have robins in Utah, but they’re not nearly so visible. I see them most frequently at dusk in early spring. I liked seeing all the robins, but they were getting in the way of me finding a unique warbler. But I still enjoy the robins.
After Audrey died, Conner needed more affection. He didn’t want either me or Jon to leave the room so we started spending a lot more time with Conner and Trevor after work. Leaving for a week made the situation much worse. I think Conner might have worried that we were never coming back.
Now Conner freaks out when I walk into the bathroom or go downstairs. He’s also figured out Audrey’s trick of standing at the edge of the shelf and yelling so that his voice echoes downstairs. Audrey only did this when he actually needed me to help him. Conner just wants to make sure that we’re still here.
It will take awhile for Conner to be his old self, at least I hope he’ll get back to being his old self. I can’t stand thinking that he might never cock his head again. Sometimes he wants me to hold him in front of Audrey’s cage so he can look inside and make happy noises. But he is getting better. He makes a few happy noises at night and today he sang when he didn’t know that we could hear him.
I wish I could bring Audrey back.
Nov 27th, 2011 by Elizabeth
Last week Jon and I travelled to South Carolina and Georgia to visit relatives. I saw a ton of birds, including at least three new species. I visited several parks and learned that the park system on the east coast is amazing. They have defined walkways with all sorts of bridges and trail markers, public bathrooms and no fees. I’m used to areas that are poorly marked, require you to pay and are so badly maintained that you could easily sprain an ankle.
The picture above is from the Oconee River Greenway in Milledgeville, GA. That man in the picture is awesome because he was wading in the middle of the river to pickup trash. I love that! Jon and I went to a place in South Carolina that was overall very clean but there were still places where you could find styrofoam containers and plastic bottles, especially in the water. If we go back there next year I want to bring trash cans and boots for wading in the water to pick up all the junk.
The area was designed as a stream on one side and walkways on the other side in the middle of forest. The forest was quite lush and filled with birds. The most exciting bird was the Barred Owl. There were two Barred Owls hooting at each other so my step-father was able to find one of them in the forest.
I had the hardest time seeing him because his coloring blended so well with the leaves.
Some people call them hoot owls because of the noise they frequently make. It was so cool to see him out during the day since many owls are nocturnal. And as a final interesting factoid, Barred Owls frequently use Pileated Woodpecker nests for their nests.
Nov 25th, 2011 by Elizabeth
On our last day in Denver, we visited Rocky Mountain Lake Park. It’s more like a pond and had very few birds, but was quite beautiful. It’s one of those places that help establish Denver as an active place where people can jog and ride bicycles.
They had a squirrel with a messed up tail.
And regular squirrels with delicious nuts.
Denver was an awesome city to visit, but they have very few birds. The most abundant bird was the Canada Goose.
I was trying to imagine them into Cackling Geese so I could have a life bird, but they’re just Canada Geese. His neck seemed fairly short, though. But Cackling Geese aren’t on the range map for Colorado.
One of the geese was acting as a lookout. He perceived an invisible line that we couldn’t cross. When you stepped slightly beyond the line, he would start honking.
There were also gulls on the lake.
And a cormorant, probably a Double Crested Cormorant. Sadly the birding in this area is so poor that people visit the lake just to see the cormorants.
Denver also has a ton of flickers, but I’ve talked about those too recently so I’ll save those pictures for later.
Nov 19th, 2011 by Elizabeth
Usually when I go to Farmington Bay I can see a ton of birds that are very far away. But if you go in the afternoon, the birds are much closer. Check out all the birds!
All those dots in the picture above are birds. The picture below gives you a better perspective of the birds.
You can see all the Northern Shovelers in this picture below:
In the middle of this group, I saw a new bird: the Northern Pintail.
The Northern Pintail is uncommon in the winter, so I’m lucky to have seen him here. Here’s a back view of the pintail and a female mallard lower in the picture.
In the winter, pintails eat plant materials from the water bodies. I think this is a female on the left. Female Northern Pintails look like female mallards with more white splotches.
I still can’t get over how beautiful the mountains look in the yellow light.
By the end of the birding trip it was almost sunset. I’d never seen the sun setting over the mountains at Farmington Bay. It was a gorgeous view.
Nov 18th, 2011 by Elizabeth
Back in May, several of the tours of Antelope Island included a look at Great-horned Owl babies. They’re extra adorable with all that fuzz.
Mom was watching from nearby.
It was a great opportunity to see her legs. First off, she’s wearing a lovely set of pants. Second, check out those serious claws. She could take out a lot of animals with those feet.
A few months later we went back and the babies had fledged. You can still see the white fuzz around their faces.
Last weekend at Farmington Bay I came across another owl. I’m not sure if this is the same as the baby I saw during the summer or the parent, but I would guess it’s one of the ones I saw law summer since he flew down from the same tree.
I’ve never gotten such a great unobstructed view of an owl before.
And checkout the gorgeous coloring on his back.
It helps that I took the picture much later in the day than usual. At three p.m. the light is more golden and soft.
You’re supposed to go as early as possible in the morning to get the highest number of birds, but three p.m. was best for birds this time. I’ll write about the ducks later – there are a ridiculous number of ducks out in the afternoon.