Birding and Bird Photography

Awesome, awesome Osprey pictures!

Wow, that is a lot of birds in the raptor center! There's a raptor center at UC Davis that has probably half that number of birds. No wonder they need donations!

 

Those were a couple of great links! Thank you.

 

Is that a fishing dip net in the ospreys nest?

 

Is that a fishing dip net built into the ospreys nest?

 

Saw a ton of egrets out this morning and decided to leave the dog and come back in the afternoon. I need some practice swinging the big glass-far too long since I've used it. And most of the birds were gone too

Here are three for you.


Egret


Great Blue Heron

Finally, I saw this guy. His wing is obviously borked and probably won't last the night.



White Pelican

 

Nice shots, Ian and Ben!
Ben: I really like that last Red-tail shot and the Kestrel shot. I think American Kestrels are my favorite raptor. Did you keep an eye out for many more birds on your trip? Might've caught some neat different ones up there at high elevation.
Ian: Really nice Snowy Egret! I like the setting on the little island and the colors are really nice. That poor Pelican! Sad to see that, but such is life. We have/had an Anna's hummingbird with a broken mandible. It broke way up at the base of the bill, so he couldn't open his mouth at all and it was loose so sometimes he would have to whack it back into place before he could feed. He couldn't preen, either, so he flew really slowly and awkwardly and his tail feathers were still in pin because he couldn't preen the sheath off when they were growing in. He lasted a while, though. We first noticed him at our feeders a few months ago but he's been missing in the past few days...

 

Thanks! The Snowy Egrets are all over the place now. I would like to find a Black Crowned Night Heron hanging around. I haven't seen but a couple this year.

I hate that the Pelican will suffer. In the end, however, it's the right thing. I know some would want to call the rescue peeps-that thought crossed my mind.

 

Oooh, nice. Hooters! Too bad about the short lens, but it definitely paid off, as I see in the SOS thread and on flickr. I don't know the calls, but if you can remember the way the owls were hooting you can probably figure out what species they are! Of course that's not the way you're recording species, but it'd be neat to find out what you were camping with!

The only place I've seen large numbers of Black-crowned Night-Herons was in NorCal. Rarely see them here in SoCal, but man they're cool! Definitely like old cranky hermits.
Yeah, let nature take it's course. My parents found a Cooper's Hawk with a broken wing on one of our neighborhood trails a few years back and my mom ended up carrying it back home and we called a wildlife rescue place and they ended up putting it down. It was better than leaving it for a dog or someone else to come along, but it is removing from the food chain. With that pelican, the wing is too far gone to merit calling the rescue folks, as sad as that is. It'd probably be too difficult to try to recover it. The Cooper's Hawk was just an easy grab, apparently, so probably worth it to save the animal some stress and pain.

 

There are a couple of apps that would let you ID by song. There's even a good free app that works sort of like an Audubon Society Field Guide (shape and color give you possibilities. Song is included). I think about downloading one of them now and again but haven't. The ones that record work like Sound Hound or Shazam.

 

Merlin is a great bird ID app , but it doesn't feature the record function you are describing

 

NO WAY! I didn't know that someone had already developed that! Every once and a while I find myself wishing for something like that. Do you happen to remember the app names?

 

Merlin is the guide like app-it has calls but you need to ID first using shape, color, and a selection from the list. WeBird and Bird Song Id USA are two others.

 

Better than a phone or a bear Looks like a cutie

 

I know everyone gets tired of seeing himmingbird pics, but i couldnt resist. We had 15-20 swarming the feeder at once.

 

Daaaang that's crazy! Super jealous

 

Not I! Or Osprey's or....

A friend of mine that is also retired Navy lives in Texas. Last year he posted pictures of a ring hummingbird feeder at his place that was packed solid with hummers. Said he thought the drought brought them in and he was going through 5 pounds of sugar a week.

Haven't seen a male hummer in more than a week, they have headed your way already. Quite a few females here yet and they are still territory, I've had some less than a foot from my face on the deck over the last week wondering if I was going to get stuck by one.