BIRDS

My wife took this one through her office window today. It's a red-tailed hawk eating a pigeon.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs890.ash1/179798_499492798799_667643799_6350014_1191043_n.jpg

That hawk looks so sad, like he feels bad for the pigeon or something.

Now I like gulls most of the time, but all morning there's been one herring gull who has been hanging around a rabbit hole on the grassy bank outside my window, and every time a baby rabbit pops up to have their first nibble of fresh spring grass, this fat fucking gull chases them and tries to eat them.

fucking awesome

the birds in NZ are rad btw and I am going to buy a book and identify them all. there is a sort of blackbirdy one that is everywhere but it has gaudy white patches all over its wings and a very haughty supercilium. I think if I were a NZ bird I would much rather be it than a kiwi.

I'd never witnessed this behaviour before but it seems like it's definitely a thing...

picture linkified cos it's sad and gross

xp yeah, I would be a total noob with nz birds

herring gulls bring out the Princess TamTam in me more than probably anything else in the world. that picture ownes.

Talking of NZ, I always remember seeing kea on Attenborough's Life Of Birds staking out shearwater burrows, listening intently for movement and then digging the chicks out with their bills once they knew they were inside. Evil bastards.

Might not have been shearwater btw, but some burrowing bird anyway.

Ooh, not sure I've seen a kea! I did see a fucken kickass hawk from the car tho. Gonna investigate our birds of prey pronto -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AWCvay6vj0

Evil bastards, I tell you.

the birds in NZ are rad btw and I am going to buy a book and identify them all. there is a sort of blackbirdy one that is everywhere but it has gaudy white patches all over its wings and a very haughty supercilium. I think if I were a NZ bird I would much rather be it than a kiwi.

― acoleuthic, Monday, 28 February 2011 11:32 (5 days ago)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_world%27s_100_worst_invasive_species

third one

:D

The starlings over Kidlington are incredible at the moment, around 1730 in an evening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_world%27s_100_worst_invasive_species

ninetieth one

:D

Birds Youtube Song

I saw a pyrrhuloxia today!!

I did not take this pic but look at this dude

http://www.birdsasart.com/rootjpegs/pyrrhuloxia-male-TX-279T0001.jpg

phyroloxia if I'm not mistaken...I've always wanted to see one.

I saw one in Cruces, once, too.

swifts are back over W12, have been a week or so. which makes them nearly 3 weeks earlier than last year, i think.

saw a budgie in the park this morning, fighting with the blackbirds. and winning.

Why is there so little sexual dimorphism in doves & pigeons compared to other types of birds?

http://orientalbirdimages.org/images/data/jambu%20fruit%20dove%20cl.jpg

There is some, but mostly in what I think of as exotic species (like the jambu fruit dove above). Don't think any UK residents show it, so from that POV, that's a good question!

I was thinking about it yesterday – how come these doves don't have much sexual dimporphism? The dove in question btw is the white-wing dove, which is all over the Southwest:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Zenaida_asiatica_-Tuscon_-Arizona_-USA_-8a.jpg

I thought, maybe I am just unobservant. But today I saw two doves have sex in a tree and I thought, nope, no way I could tell those two apart.

Swifts are back here too btw koogs, and every year their screams make me wish I'd got round to fixing up some nest boxes for them. Maybe next time! xxxp

whenever i see this thread title i think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=651UYYxrfh0

I'm guessing that any sexual dimorphism in pigeons and doves would be for sexual display or competition. Thinking about the species I'm familiar with that aren't obviously dimorphic, during courtship the males do tend to do a lot of that puffed-up neck, strutting about stuff instead, and that probably serves the same purpose without the evolutionary effort? Wondering too if bright colours might make them more obvious to predators, all our native species are really drab earth and rock colours (albeit with subtle flashes of irridescence).

Not an expert, but some poking around in Google suggests that the lack of strong dimorphism is related to the fact that most pigeon species share parenting duties--kind of makes sense, any heavy-duty male plumage or w/e would probably attract too much attention to the nest?

PS would like to cosign pyrrhuloxia love upthread.

Did read the recommendation somewhere that upturned bin lids are left in the garden with wet mud in them, as swifts/martins are struggling to make nests.

omg this morning at 7am there was a bird cycling through about 6 different calls... like a car alarm that cycles through different sounds. it was CRAZY. i have no idea how to figure out what it was.

shazam for birdcalls can't come fast enough

If it was all clicks and whistles and crazy things, it might have been a starling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9waQFLwF7no

it was much more lyrical than that

Probably some sort of thrush then - American robin?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98DFgHAe-Qw

i am starting to think it was maybe a mocking bird singing through several different calls/sounds?

http://www.birdjam.com/birdsong.php?id=4&osCsid=ddunch423ggjr7q0ei58jcmia7

I have a robin friend

> swifts are back over W12, have been a week or so.
> koogs, Friday, 13 May 2011 09:33 (11 months ago)

saw one, friday 27th april. although now he's probably flying around soaking wet wondering why he bothered.

Seeing Gambel's quails – always a treat! They're so charming. I saw three today.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/I-like-my-house.jpg

Photo and caption by Mark Bridger/National Geographic Photo Contest. This is Gandalf the Great Grey Owl and he gets scared flying out in the open so his owners have built his aviary inside a brick shed. He now loves spending his days watching the world go by out of his window.

That's a sad state for an owl to be in. Come out and play, big feller!

How Does An Owl Hide?

Is it a good time of year to go to Slimbridge Wetlands Centre?

nice weather for ducks. (don't know)

we had 10 (count them) goldfinches on our tiny tree over christmas.

Niger seed?

re SWC : from the website it appears that more stuff will be happening at the end of jan.

also, it hasn't stopped raining here for days now (i live quite near), and cant imagine it being overly pleasant there.

Is it a good time of year to go to Slimbridge Wetlands Centre?

Would be better if it was much colder and frozen, I reckon that with the relatively mild weather and all the rain, then all the native wildfowl and waders will be distributed over the surrounding countryside. Never been but I think Slimbridge has a collection of captive birds so there will be all of them and they probably have feeding stations and managed habitat for wild songbirds so there might be good numbers of those. Might be a chance of all the other birds pulling in some raptors too, so I think you've got as good a chance of seeing stuff there as you would have anywhere else.

i enjoy birds but there's something undeniably sinister about them as well

Just refilled the feeder outside my office window. Birds get happy, and it's a home entertainment system for the cats and me.

Thing I love about birds is the sense that they're so at one with their environment. You watch them doing their birdy things and going about their birdy business and you get this sense that at one birdy level they know so many secret things about how life works in the local area... funny little rhythms of life that we're not privy to, when and where it is that all the bugs start hatching out, whose garden to visit for frostbitten rosehips when the winter takes hold, what bush you can safely shelter in on a cold, wet night, stuff like that. Also the sense of vulnerability you get from them - most birds are living on a knife-edge when it comes to finding enough edible calories especially in competition with everything else out there, or when they're dodging hazards like cats and hawks and humans and whatnot. You know you're cushioned from a lot of that stuff as a human, you don't have the same vital day to day struggles, but at the same time you do get some inkling of the fragility and specialness of life.

birds are more it's true