BIRDS

http://jet-point.com/wp-content/ice_cream_stealing_birds_1.jpg

picturesofbirdsstealingicecream.com

loooooooooooooooooooooooooool

i fucking love gulls

That's kind of horrifying for me. I'm sort of scared of birds. :-(

Herring Gulls are just so garrulously kickass and obnoxious in a sort of totally awesome way

They all scare me.

Best gull story ever is that one time when they were little my friends Kevin and Jef where swimming in the ocean and Jef picked his nose and smeared it on Kevin and then ate the rest. Kevin was so grossed out that he puked right then and there in the ocean immediately after which a seagull flew down and ate the puke. True story.

Lesson? Gulls eat vomit and are therefore gross. My friends are gross too but also v v awesome.

All seabirds (and indeed most birds) eat vomit. When adults feed their young, they do so at first largely through regurgitation.

What a delightful conversation!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2421246/Vicar-has-to-wear-hard-hat-to-church-after-seagull-attack.html

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Savage-Seagull-Attack-Leaves-Woman-Bloodied-And-Shaken-In-Somerset/Article/200807215030277?lpos=UK_News_Article_Related_Content_Region_13&lid=ARTICLE_15030277_Savage_Seagull_Attack_Leaves_Woman_Bloodied_And_Shaken_In_Somerset

Please check out the caption on that article's picture. I think we should invite the guy who wrote it.

Scary! But yes, great caption.

The url reminds me of the Zoolander speech - no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied along the way, just so long so you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied and dying along the way...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090320/twl-environment-us-birds-usa-1202b49.html

good luck usa

A robin is nesting in an archway thing in my parents' backyard:

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c287/expatrica/P5090114.jpg

So blue!

What sort of robin? A real robin or yr silly "American robin" which is actually a thrush?

x-post Aren't they awesome? I got a bunch of cool pics. I keep trying to get one of the mama but she flies away when I get within 3 ft of the nest. :-(

LJ - I don't know, I guess an American one? One of the brown and orange ones.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/derby/content/images/2005/01/13/2005_feature_bird_watching_robin_gallery_470x300.jpg

'real' robin. I'm sure it will be this, the american robin is also brown and orange but larger.

They're nosey little birds, and will get very close to you if you're minding your own business. I think you getting close to their nest is not a great idea. I'm always greeted with friendly robins when I'm out fishing, stealing my maggots.

camping in wales once, i was awoken to a robin that had hopped into our tent.

We have Blackbirds nesting in our garden and they have lovely blue eggs too. I imagine it's a "don't eat me" message to other animals. Not that it stops the bastid squirrels who will eat anything.

Thrush eggs are speckled blue incidentally so these are mos' def' robins.

Ste is right about the noseyness too, as soon as we start gardening they'll come hopping along and sneak any worms dug up. They get bullied by the sparrows in our garden but they can mostly hold their own.

i think i still immediately think of christmas when i see robins, from when i was a kid and seeing them on christmas cards all the time.

xp, yeah i think they stick to the same 'zone' more than most other birds, so when other birds enter their territory they can become very defensive.

The UK Robin is limited to Europe, you don't get them in North America. Those are definitely American Robin eggs too, ours lay 5 or 6 little pale brown jobs.

new garden has Coal Tits nesting in a box on a Scots pine

The robins in our garden are being very charming at the moment. One of them, presumably the male, keeps coming to the feeder to get a sunflower seed, then flying up to a nearby branch to feed it to his mate as a sort of little love offering.

x-post - we've got blue tits, kind of apprehensive about the chicks first few days 'in the wild' what with all the cats round our way (the furry bastards).

Yeah, I'm getting confused - when we were talking about american Robins being Thrushes I thought - european thrushes but I see now (having gone to wiki - d'oh) that it's a whole different thing. and quite groovy looking.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Turdus-migratorius-002.jpg/200px-Turdus-migratorius-002.jpg

Yeah, they're smart looking fellers aren't they? Colourwise they're kind of a composite of the body of a song thrush, head of a blackbird, breast of a robin. Every now and again, one will get blown over the Atlantic by a storm and will turn up in a garden somewhere for a few days. Lords knows what happens to them after that.

So to sum up...(to get it clear in my tiny brain)

European Robin (with eggs)
http://www.taxidermy4cash.com/tonyrobinnest.jpg

American Robin (see above)

European Thrush
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Song_thrush.jpg/250px-Song_thrush.jpg
and eggs
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Three_Song_Thrush_(Turdus_philomelos)_eggs.jpg/180px-Three_Song_Thrush_(Turdus_philomelos)_eggs.jpg

I like the way that those robins painted a picture of a church in their spare time.

They seem to have rigged up an electricity for the nest as well

Oh, they're clever.

with all the topics on ILX that turn into US/UK comparison threads, I'd still never have guessed "robins" was one of them

the poster responsible...less of a surprise

I retract "silly", although I maintain that calling it a robin is a big fat misnomer

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/hunting/condor/images/condor119.jpg

we see your fancy britishes robin and raise you a california condor

my backyard in SF is populated by Anna's hummingbirds:
http://www.comoxvalleynaturalist.bc.ca/assets/images/birds/annas_hummingbird_m.jpg

and Stellar's Jays:
http://www.governmentcaucus.bc.ca/media/Stellar%27s-Jay_225.jpg

and occasionally the fearsome Common Raven, western:
http://tompawlesh.smugmug.com/photos/225724675_Zc65L-M.jpg

these guys actually scare me. they're big as fucking gulls, and i'm used to crows.

I retract "silly", although I maintain that calling it a robin is a big fat misnomer

― sorry for british (country matters), Monday, 11 May 2009 11:55 (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I spent most of this winter complaining about these texas-sized robin imposters. Turdus Migratorius indeed.

Genus Erithacus or nothing, mate. Red breasted bastard thrush.

My dad had a big, barrel-shaped barbeque grill used for smoking meats. It had a little chimney with a latch that could open or close access to it. My dad had left it open and some robins built a nest in it. My dad wanted to remove the nest so he could cook on it, but naturally his three daughters greeted this with protests and tears. This debate happened every few days until the birds left the nest.

british robins are very territorial and will fight to the death to protect their territory.

The national aviary here in pittsburgh one of these

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/45/128223385_cb9f040e60.jpg?v=0

a pygmy falcon, which would probably loose in a fight with an territorially aggrieved robin.

omg such conflicting and confused thoughts about that bird

They have one of these too

http://whyfiles.org/shorties/180chickadee/images/pygmy_owl.jpg

For a so-called national aviary it is very small, I think someone built the national aviary of Liechtenstein here. They have a sloth as well which is rather delightful but not strictly a bird.

Is that a pygmy owl? I know such a breed exists.

Ah, so it is. URLs are so helpful.

There are several breeds, I really want to got to the dessert to see the cactus dwelling ones

http://media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper997/stills/hdyogypb.jpg
http://www.swca.com/projects/project_images/6647_1.jpg
http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/images/POCactus.jpg

We had a storm the other morning. I looked out into the sallow light and saw two woodpigeons in the road. They were waddling about in the rain, lifting one wing high into the air, then the other, and tipping on their side, right against the tarmac - essentially washing their armpits, like some kind of festival shower. It was amazing.

4:04 today. it's uncanny.

listen carefully and he seems to be doing call and response with another bird that's nearly out of earshot.

lol i heard one of these fuckers the other day at almost exactly the same time, used Merlin to identify it and yep it was a blackbird.

The ones that really do sing all night near us are wrens. I don't think they ever sleep?

the thing is starts at 4 and then stops after 30 minutes or so. everything else starts when it gets light.

We had a storm the other morning. I looked out into the sallow light and saw two woodpigeons in the road. They were waddling about in the rain, lifting one wing high into the air, then the other, and tipping on their side, right against the tarmac - essentially washing their armpits, like some kind of festival shower. It was amazing.
I saw this for literally the first time ever about a month ago, so funny and wonderful. Could not stop watching. I thought the pigeon was fucked up and dying at first.

sandhill cranes are migrating through central nebraska now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDYrRVUPWRo

I put Merlin on my phone this past week and am really loving it, but I think its ID of a Baltimore Oriole in my neighborhood this morning was a mistake maybe. And it definitely missed a woodpecker that I could clearly hear. But still, fun to sit out on the porch with coffee for a few minutes every morning and watch the IDs pile up.

A friend turned me on to it during the early pandemic and I still love it. It's great for connecting with your surroundings like your coffee moments. I also like to give it a whirl when I'm traveling to see if any new birds pop up that I don't get at home, which is always a treat.

I've been getting Grey Catbirds lately, which sound really nice.

Saw this charming little one yesterday in Dublin, it was incredibly tame and hopping around tables in search of crumbs. After about an hour reading up on thrushes and various other birds I thought it was, I thought it was maybe a juvenile blackbird? But would welcome more informed opinion on this.

https://i.imgur.com/F3BSK7p.jpeg

Beak doesn't look the right shape for a blackbird. Spotted flycatcher maybe? Let me research...definitely a juvenile I think though yeah. Surely not a starling

It's a starling

I did think 'starling' from the body shape, beak shape and bold behaviour, but I didn't know young starlings look like that!

Do they! My mother said the same thing about starlings and the shape of their beak and I was kind of looking at her sideways, like, who knew she was an ornithologist? She did grow up in the country though

It also perched on user darraghmac’s hand like he was a Disney princess

We need a photo of this encounter on WDYLL.

let it go

starlings are assholes iirc

in group situations

in the last few days a wren has set up shop in a tree behind our house and has been LOUDLY and INCESSANTLY advertising himself to the neighbourhood lady wrens, boasting about his vitality and facility with nest-making and i'm like WE GET IT CAN YOU SHUT UP

You gotta help him get him laid—maybe be his………………..WINGMAN!!!!11!!!

It also perched on user darraghmac’s hand like he was a Disney princess

cool!
there are birding spots in central park, nyc where people go specifically to feed the birds out of their hand. i do it often! be still and the world will come to you.
tufted titmice (titmouses?) and chickadees are usually the most eager.
the former like peanuts. the latter find peanuts a bit cumbersome or unwieldy due to their size and prefer sunflower seeds.
if you have (or can get) black oil sunflower seeds, many birds really like those.

i keep a separate pouch of acorns and whole peanuts in their shells to feed the squirrels, who are very fat.
nevertheless, the squirrels will stop at nothing to get the bird fodder from my statuesque, extended hand.
they will climb up my leg and jump on me from out of nowhere. they have actually scratched me pretty badly and torn clothing. i love them.

but this thread is for birds, so the strangest thing is when you get a bunch of them lining up to eat out of your hand (bird traffic!), the incoming bird seems to have right of way.
the bird perched on your hand will move out of the way to make room for the incoming bird.
there is certainly a pecking order. someone explained it to me once, and it sort of made sense, but i forgot what they said about it.

can't find the full quality but here is some chickadee traffic

https://jumpshare.com/s/VPERAI2z8P4ZWaZezIM6

Cormorant spotted! in The Lake @ Central Park on my foliage walk through The Ramble on Monday. They don’t usually come around here, and this is the closest I’ve ever been able to get to one. Along the southern edge of The Ramble in between Bethesda Fountain and Bow Bridge, which is a very busy tourist area, but nobody else stopped or even blinked. Anyway, I offered NOMs which the cormorant didn’t NOM but followed me over to the next outcropping when I walked away and posed for a closeup before taking flight.

https://i.ibb.co/MDh8cKCh/20251110-153755.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/gbM9tWgS/20251110-154240.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/F4yr7fHR/20251110-154812.jpg

Thats a GBH, king

Thanks!! Don’t see them in Manhattan too frequently.