Forum Birdwatching 2010

Vultures! It's really spring!

Saw the first turkey vulture of the season here today, along with a basking turtle (ok, I know they're not birds but that's not their fault) and a fresh batch of robins. The robins in our back yard have a lush, rich red, as if they'd been freshly printed. Lots of Canada geese taking advantage of the annual flooding of some of the cornfields, and the chickadees are making their territorial spring calls.

Add to my list:

Turkey vulture, cathartes aura

American Goldfinch, carduelis tristis

Pileated Woodpecker, dryocopus pileatus

Canada Goose, branta canadensis

Wild Turkey, meleagris gallopavo
 
I can't find what we have listed so far but I had such a nice day yesterday: no exotic or unusual birds just time and leisure to watch the more common ones at Loch Winnoch
chaffinches
coal tits
great tits
blue tits
mute swans
tufted ducks
teal
a golden eye
rooks
jackdaws
blackbacked gulls
oyster catchers
a greylag goose
mallards

and here is a nice picture of a chaffinch just cos I like it

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4020/4448861870_19e3317fb2_b.jpg
 
Some more (and welcome) spring arrivals recently:

A few Great Blue Herons, ardea herodias, are back.

Yesterday we had a pair of Northern Orioles, icterus galbula, in the tree outside my living room.

And today, we got a flock of Common Grackles, quiscalus quiscula, and our first Red-Winged Blackbird, agelaius phoeniceus, of the season.
 
I saw yesterday a bird that was new to me. A pair of grey wagtails by my favourite local lake. I had my binoculars so had a decent look. I know pied wagtails so their long tail and wagging behaviour were familiar but of course the yellow on their underside was not. They were a lovely pair.

Also saw a bullfinch. The mute swans have geared up for Spring as the Alpha male was cruising around with his wings curved up on his back. He had the largest black protuberance on the top of his beak that I had ever seen. A very impressive specimen. I love my local 'pond' as it is called, although it is the largest body of water in Hampshire.
 
Finally got my spring birds back the other day... Nothing new to the list, but nice to see them again.

4-1-2010 - Macedonia, OH
Red-winged blackbird – Agelaius phoeniceus
Common grackle – Quiscalus quiscula

These are in addition to the usual suspects (cardinals, juncos, finches, and the like...)

I've also got some crazy gray/black squirrel crosses going in my yard. They are very cute.
 
A cute little chipping sparrow came to the feeder today. The males have a nice little reddish brown cap, my daughters found him very amusing. We've also started getting large numbers of common grackles and brown headed cowbirds...

Not unusual, but new to the list for the year:
Macedonia, Ohio, US - 4/7/2010
Chipping sparrow - Spizella passerina

ETA:
Shortly after posting I saw my first savannah sparrow of the year as well. Also completely unremarkable, but new to the list for the year.
Savannah sparrow - Passerculus sandwichensis
 
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Ballona Wetlands (LA Area), California, 10 April 2010

Pictures:
Rufous Hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus
Red-Winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus
Ash-Throated flycatcher, Myiarchus cinerascens - My first, I think. If that's what it really is.
Double-crested cormorant, Phalocrocorax auritus
American Coot, Fulica americana
Common Moorhen, Gallinula chloropus
Killdeer, charadrius vociferus
Ruddy Duck, Oxyura jamaicensis
Great Egret, Ardea alba
Housefinch (yellow variant), carpodacus mexicanus
. . at least, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. I've seen a yellow variant housefinch in that area before, and last year I even got a picture of him sitting with a bunch of normally-colored housefinches.

No pictures:
Great-Tailed Grackle, quiscalus mexicanus
Mourning dove, Zenaida macroura
Canada Goose, Branta Canadensis
Black Phoebe, Sayornis nigricans
Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos

That hummingbird was close enough that I was having trouble focusing on it. Unfortunately, it was sitting on the end of thin branch of a thin tree in a gusty wind, so it was hard to keep it in the frame, let alone get a perfect picture.
 

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Balboa Lake, LA area, California. Which would barely be a pond in the midwest, but I digress. There are a lot of domesticated birds there, including a lot of white ducks and greylag geese.

I was going to go off on a rant about how it's hard enough to identify ducks (constantly changing their #&@^* coloration) without mixing in domestic mallards (identifiable by their colors, which may or may not include green, black, brown, white, blue, a different shade of black, a shinier green, or some other color, in varying patterns). But I'll hold off.

Does anyone else think those chinese geese calls sound creepy? I'd never seen (or heard) one before today.

Pictures:
Red-Winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus
Great-tailed grackle, quiscalus mexicanus
Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos
American Coot, Fulica americana
Double-Crested Cormorant, Phalacrocorax auritus
Pied-Billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps
Greylag goose, Anser anser (my first, unless I saw them on a farm in my youth)
American Wigeon, Anas americana
Ross's goose, Chen Rossii (my first)
Chinese Goose, Answer cygnoides (definitely my first)
Muscovy Duck, Cairina moschata (my first)

No pictures:
Canada Goose, Branta Canadensis
Brewer's Blackbird, Euphagus cyanocephalus

For the attachments - I have no idea what that black-green duck is; I'm open to suggestions. I finally got a sharp picture of a grebe, so I had to include that. The geese were so big and pushy that I had to include a shot of them. And, of course, an American Coot in the obligatory big-bird-feet picture for the forum members who are into that sort of thing. It's not my place to judge.
 

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dasmiller said:
...I finally got a sharp picture of a grebe, so I had to include that....
Click to expand...

Pied billed grebes have developed the ability to stay just of the range for a sharp picture of any nearby cameras. It is truly a fete to have taken one. Obviously they thought you were one of them.

As to probable mallard/domestic mix: I think it's that too, although I don't recall seeing one quite like that, they are amazingly variable. It would be interesting to hear what a geneticist had to say about the very large variation in size and coloration that the mixtures have. I wonder if the domestic mixtures would die off quickly if people stopped feeding them. Some of them seem to be similar in size and flight capability to the natural mallards, I wonder how they would fare without people.
 
Spent this morning watching for hawks with some other birders on Dinosaur Ridge west of Denver, Colorado, USA. Later in the afternoon we checked out nearby Red Rocks park.

Turkey Vulture Cathartes aura
Osprey Pandion haliaetus
Cooper's Hawk Accipiter cooperii
Northern Goshawk Accipiter gentilis
Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos
Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus
White-throated Swift Aeronautes saxatalis
Say's Phoebe Sayornis saya
Mountain Chickadee Poecile gambeli
Juniper Titmouse Baeolophus ridgwayi
 
American Kestrel, Falco sparverious

Western Kingbird, Tyrannous verticalus
At Palmdale.
 

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No new species, but I can report that the Peregrine Falcons have returned to Mount Horrid. Not big news, perhaps, but how many times do you get to put Mount Horrid in a sentence?

Here's Mount Horrid, on a non-falcony winter day:


mount horrid.jpg
 
Everything's late this year.

River Isla - Perthshire 22/04/2010
Sand martin, Riparia riparia
Swallow, Hirundo rustica
Osprey, Pandion haliaetus
 
Dave's birdhouse
I built a birdhouse and attached it to a tree in our backyard on April 4, 2010. So far no inhabitants. Maybe I hung it too late, maybe the birds would prefer a birdhouse in a yard that doesn't have a cat hanging out in it all day, or maybe there's some other problem.

The birdhouse instructions suggested that for some species the hole should be 1.5 inch and for some species the hole should be 1 9/16 inches. It seems unlikely that the birds are that discriminating about the hole size, but I didn't have a 1 and 9/16 inch bit so I wobbled the 1.5 inch drill bit a little bit when I drilled the hole and hoped that the birds weren't too picky about not having exactly the right hole size. I hope the birds aren't looking for hole sizes built with metric measurements.

 
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San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, Irvine, CA
My wife and I visited the sanctuary a couple of weeks ago. Numerous small ponds had been built there. Perhaps, by the duck hunting club that previously occupied the site, to attract ducks for hunting. The most interesting pond was the one shown in this picture:


Besides the two guys shown in the picture there were three other photographers staked out at the pond with trick cameras and long lenses.

For reasons that I didn't understand the small pond attracted a wide variety of birds that all appeared to be actively feeding. Many of the birds were focused almost entirely on filter feeding in the pond. Ducks that at my local pond cruise around and dabble for aquatic plants a few inches below the surface were dedicated filter feeders here.

The most striking bird here was the American avocet. The bird swished its beak through the water in a side to side motion. This picture shows the water being forced out of the side of the beak at the completion of a swish:



Other birds at the sanctuary:
tree swallow

black-necked stilt

cinnamon teal

green winged teal

stilt sandpiper

western grebe


The grebe is appropriately fuzzy. It seems that western grebes have the same skill at avoiding sharp pictures that pied-billed grebes have as noted previously by dasmiller.

As always, I really appreciate it when somebody finds a bird that I've misidentified. The western grebe is the prime candidate in this post for that distinction.

April 10, 2010 San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, Irvine, CA
American avocet Recurvirostra americana
tree swallow Tachycineta bicolor
black-necked stilt Himantopus mexicanus
cinnamon teal Anas cyanoptera
green-winged teal Anas carolinensis
stilt sandpiper Calidris himantopus
western grebe Aechmophorus occidentalis

no picture:
spotted towhee Pipilo maculatus

This was the first time I'd seen a spotted towhee. I was surprised at how different its coloring was from the California towhee that are common inland here in Orange County.
 
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davefoc said:
Dave's birdhouse
I built a birdhouse and attached it to a tree in our backyard on April 4, 2010. So far no inhabitants. Maybe I hung it too late, maybe the birds would prefer a birdhouse in a yard that doesn't have a cat hanging out in it all day, or maybe there's some other problem.

The birdhouse instructions suggested that for some species the hole should be 1.5 inch and for some species the hole should be 1 9/16 inches. It seems unlikely that the birds are that discriminating about the hole size, but I didn't have a 1 and 9/16 inch bit so I wobbled the 1.5 inch drill bit a little bit when I drilled the hole and hoped that the birds weren't too picky about not having exactly the right hole size. I hope the birds aren't looking for hole sizes built with metric measurements.

[qimg]http://lh6.ggpht.com/_WI4_0Bta7RM/S9C9IGyF8FI/AAAAAAAACHc/JOaoiijIJuQ/s128/birdhouse_5636.JPG[/qimg]
Click to expand...

My understanding is that at least here in the northeast, bluebirds are pretty picky about hole size, but also that they do their scouting in late winter, so you're probably too late for bluebirds. But wrens will nest in just about anything that has a hole, including things that aren't birdhouses.* Perhaps the wrens aren't back yet there. They're not yet here. If that's the case, you might still have a hope for wrens.

*like the mast of your boat.....


wren peeks out of mast.jpg
 
davefoc said:
San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, Irvine, CA
My wife and I visited the sanctuary a couple of weeks ago.
Click to expand...

I rarely make it that far south, but one of these days I really should go down there. You have some great pictures, particularly that avocet.

As always, I really appreciate it when somebody finds a bird that I've misidentified. The western grebe is the prime candidate in this post for that distinction.
Click to expand...

Well, after looking at my (admittedly meager) references, I'd have to concur that it's a western grebe, though I'll allow the possibility that it's a hybrid western/Clark's.

BTW - I've never gotten a good picture of a western grebe.
 
Bruto, I just realized that the mast is laying down in your image. I couldn't figure out how you got above your mast to take a picture of a bird nesting in it. So, did you forgo sailing while the bird had commandeered your boat?


Canadian geese questions:

These are images I took of a Canadian geese pair that was hanging out in the pond of our local park. I believe the second image is of a male because it was somewhat larger than the other bird. Canadian geese are unusual in this pond and this lone pair was gone in a few days after I first saw them.

There is a small white area over the eye of the one I thought might be a male. I didn't think much of this at first. I thought it was just an anomalous little white mark. However, when I looked at other images I realized that the bird has symmetrical white marks just above its eyes. The presumed female doesn't have the marks. I found similar marks on one on-line image of what looks like the larger of the two parents in a Canadian goose family image at the Birds of Orange County site.

Are these marks common in Canadian geese?

Is it possible that they are a sex indicator?

What in the world could be the purpose of these marks?

Is it possible that they are indicative of a particular subspecies or even species? Maybe cackling geese don't have them?

Thanks, Dave

Probably a female


Probably a male
(You need to expand the image to see the white mark over the eye)


April 18, 2010 Clark Park, Buena Park, CA
Canadian Goose Branta canadensis

Anybody have any thoughts on what the subspecies is?
 
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