BIRDS (and how to look at them)

[Hereward]

Great to hear about the California birding. Horrible to hear about your mum and the anxiety. One day we’ll go birding together!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Some motherfucker just spent $1,900,000.00 on a pigeon.

 

[Fragile Bird]

Have you guys seen the Kickstarter out of the UK, of a birdfeeder that will take pictures of all the birds that come to feed, identify them, and organize the photos? They've raised more than $4.6 M Cdn for the project. Delivery will be in September.

I am so tempted!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mybirdbuddy/bird-buddy-a-smart-bird-feeder

[Wilbur]

4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Have you guys seen the Kickstarter out of the UK, of a birdfeeder that will take pictures of all the birds that come to feed, identify them, and organize the photos? They've raised more than $4.6 M Cdn for the project. Delivery will be in September.

I am so tempted!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mybirdbuddy/bird-buddy-a-smart-bird-feeder

I hope that this product is better at timing the pictures than my game trail cameras are.

I have set up still and video cameras on our bird feeders over the years, and no matter what settings I use for the still camera, it still collects a wide variety of photographs of birds' wings, asses, tailfeathers, and extremely useless close-ups in addition to a small number of decent pictures.

[Xray the Enforcer]

I am sure I posted this earlier in the pandemic -- or maybe not, I cannot remember more than a day or two ago anymore -- but if you're stuck indoors, and especially stuck indoors in an area with cold and dreary weather, you need to watch the Panama Feeder Cam. 

 

[Elder Sister]

On 1/10/2021 at 6:10 AM, Xray the Enforcer said:

I am sure I posted this earlier in the pandemic -- or maybe not, I cannot remember more than a day or two ago anymore -- but if you're stuck indoors, and especially stuck indoors in an area with cold and dreary weather, you need to watch the Panama Feeder Cam. 

Okay - thank you for my new favorite thing.

Birding here in the SE US has been fantastic.  I guess it's because I'm stuck at home and not traveling non-stop like I normally am, but I have rose-breasted grosbeaks at my feeder along with ruby-crowned kinglets, which are the cutest things I have ever seen IN MY LIFE.

Mr. ES and I have been spending time in the woods (wearing a lot of orange!!) scoping out the various duck species we have around here and they're so gorgeous.  Mergansers, wood ducks, and mallards...the adult male wood ducks are so gorgeous, and the female mergansers look like they will shoot a red death ray through your eyeball.  I love them.  

[Xray the Enforcer]

I just spent 20 minutes trying to figure out where you could get some Redhead ducks near you. Found one place that had Redhead AND Canvasback, but now I cannot re-find it on the map.

[Wilbur]

3 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

I just spent 20 minutes trying to figure out where you could get some Redhead ducks near you. Found one place that had Redhead AND Canvasback, but now I cannot re-find it on the map.

The eBird map and database function is pretty cool for doing location searches for concurrent species.

https://ebird.org/hotspots?env.minX=-113.333763&env.minY=32.50454&env.maxX=-111.034448&env.maxY=34.047389&yr=all&m=

[Elder Sister]

5 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

I just spent 20 minutes trying to figure out where you could get some Redhead ducks near you. Found one place that had Redhead AND Canvasback, but now I cannot re-find it on the map.

I haven’t seen any this year, but we did see some last year. I think they’re only here in winter. They also have the evil death eyes only they’re yellow.

[lady narcissa]

7 hours ago, Wilbur said:

The eBird map and database function is pretty cool for doing location searches for concurrent species.

Wow that is a great and yet depressing (for me) website.  There is apparently some guy who has seen dozens of interesting birds in my neighborhood park that I have never ever seen!  Why do I never see these birds????  So jealous of this guy.  I consider myself lucky when I see my neighborhood cardinal once every other year or so.

[Xray the Enforcer]

11 hours ago, Wilbur said:

The eBird map and database function is pretty cool for doing location searches for concurrent species.

https://ebird.org/hotspots?env.minX=-113.333763&env.minY=32.50454&env.maxX=-111.034448&env.maxY=34.047389&yr=all&m=

That's where I was doing my searching, but I was also at the end of my lunch break and the eBird database returns are, ah, not the speediest. But yes! eBird is an excellent tool for planning birding outings. Going to be digging into it later today, in fact, to start planning my birding trips for the weekend.  

9 hours ago, Elder Sister said:

I haven’t seen any this year, but we did see some last year. I think they’re only here in winter. They also have the evil death eyes only they’re yellow.

Yep. Canvasbacks, Redheads, mergs, etc. These are all winter species for much of the U.S. and are why I love winter birding so much. That, and for those of us on the coast we also get WEIRD ASS SEA DUCKS. 

3 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

Wow that is a great and yet depressing (for me) website.  There is apparently some guy who has seen dozens of interesting birds in my neighborhood park that I have never ever seen!  Why do I never see these birds????  So jealous of this guy.  I consider myself lucky when I see my neighborhood cardinal once every other year or so.

Even if you're not going to get that into birding, I recommend going out with your local chapter of the Feminist Bird Club at least once. They can help you learn how to look at the landscape with an eye (or ear) for finding birds, even if it's just an idle activity to do while you're out on an architecture jaunt. We'll help you find your first Yellow Warbler yet!  

[TheLastWolf]

Title, thru eyes of course 

Jk

I'm an amateur wildlife enthusiast and birding is the first and easy step since you don't need to be in a national park for it, even urban areas have a rich albeit reducing diversity in avian life and I am looking forward to posting in this thread. My ebird account has some problems and I am starting a new one soon.

See ya! 

[lady narcissa]

16 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

Even if you're not going to get that into birding, I recommend going out with your local chapter of the Feminist Bird Club at least once. They can help you learn how to look at the landscape with an eye (or ear) for finding birds, even if it's just an idle activity to do while you're out on an architecture jaunt. We'll help you find your first Yellow Warbler yet!  

Oh my gosh Yellow Warblers look adorable!

You know before the pandemic I was keeping my eye on outings a local bird group had. But I was beginning to suspect birding and I were incompatible because a lot of outings were at 7 AM. That is just an unobtainable hour of the morning for me no matter how much I would like to see birds! If they weren't at 7 AM they were in the suburbs which I can't really get to. I'm looking for the bird group that meets up at downtown parks around 1 PM and stops for ice cream at 3. LOL.

[TheLastWolf]

5 minutes ago, lady narcissa said:

Oh my gosh Yellow Warblers look adorable!

Wait till you get to the Magnolia! 

[Xray the Enforcer]

9 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

Oh my gosh Yellow Warblers look adorable!

You know before the pandemic I was keeping my eye on outings a local bird group had. But I was beginning to suspect birding and I were incompatible because a lot of outings were at 7 AM. That is just an unobtainable hour of the morning for me no matter how much I would like to see birds! If they weren't at 7 AM they were in the suburbs which I can't really get to. I'm looking for the bird group that meets up at downtown parks around 1 PM and stops for ice cream at 3. LOL.

Winter birding is really good for late risers because ducks and gulls just do their thing all day. The early birding thing is very important during spring migration in particular, and both spring and fall migration in general, because many birds migrate at night. So in the mornings they're just arriving to your location and are hell-bent on finding food. Once the afternoon rolls around, they settle in for some rest to prepare for the next overnight migration stage. That doesn't mean that you personally need to bird in the mornings once you get the hang of birding in general, but it does tend to dictate when events are held during spring migration. 

Fall migration is another good option for you, because you get really big flights of diurnal migrants -- raptors, corvids, vultures, swallows, ducks, etc. Birding groups will sometimes set up shop in one area and stay there all day, which means you can roll in at 1pm and still get some decent birding done. Once Covid is a little less shitty I can drop a line to the various people I know who lead birding events in your area and see what kinds of things they'll be doing that are a little more your speed. 

[Xray the Enforcer]

9 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Wait till you get to the Magnolia! 

Magnolia Warblers are quality.

[Hereward]

I feel lady narcissa’s pain, especially when I’m staying at a hotel when birding in Norfolk. I paid for that sumptuous full English breakfast and I’ll be buggered if I’m going out to stand in a field until I’ve eaten it!

[Xray the Enforcer]

My routine when I'm staying somewhere to bird: Get up early enough to be out just before dawn to observe both crepuscular species like nightjars and owls, and to really enjoy the dawn chorus. Continue birding until 7:30 or 8am. Head to hotel/lodge for breakfast. Head back out to bird until lunch. Afternoons are generally pretty low-key. Late afternoon start looking for birds coming in to roost for the night (that's a really good way to find a variety of parrots, for example). After dinner, a quick night hike to look for owls, although really the nights are for herpin', nocturnal insects, and mammals. In the tropics it's usually full dark by 8:30pm or so, and I'm usually fast asleep by 9:30.

[Hereward]

My repeated failed attempt to do the 200 bird year has started phenomenally badly, partly due to the horrible weather, but mostly down to not being able to even drive 15 minutes to the lakes to see the ducks, waders and egrets. I know it won’t matter too much, as I can catch up next winter, but I better be able to get to Pembrokeshire this spring, unlike last year, or there’ll be hell to pay.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Winter ducks have been awesome on the Hudson lately, there is a tidal portion of the river called Schodack Creek (not an actual creek, more like a tidal backwater) just upriver from me where the Christmas storm caused flooding into some low areas and trapped huge amounts of dace and chubs into pools.  There has been a 80+ flock of mergansers loving life in this location.  Additionally, there have been anywhere from 12-24 bald eagles congregating together pigging out on the feast.  It's only been the last couple days that the eagles have started to move off.  There are 3 different nesting pairs and a few offspring that are year round residents of this section of the river so I'm assuming the others were just opportunists passing through?  Has been really fun to watch, in addition to the hooded mergansers, common mergansers and buffleheads who are out in front of the house daily have seen a few ruddy ducks over the last two weeks, which Is never seen here before.