BIRDS

This hummingbird stops by for baths every morning. pic.twitter.com/oaWm354Cy3

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) May 3, 2023

(all the more odd because of the way modern cameras work)

saw small, white, heron-shaped thing in the thames this morning by hammersmith bridge. book tells me it could be a small egret. egrets, i have a few...

the usual grey wagtail was hopping about too.

The sun rises at 5:30 and sets at 9:30 where I live now, and around 9 PM every night for the last week or so, a very large, extremely horny robin has landed on the fence post directly outside my office window to sing his fuck-me song for a half hour. It's cool, and kind of entertaining, but also sort of annoying. Also, around 4 PM most days, a pair of very large hawks (or possibly eagles) come out and circle slowly over the trees and field behind my building for an hour or so. And there's a gang of crows that live near the Mexican place where I get lunch once a week, and I see them flying from tree to tree. They're gigantic. Montana: these goddamn birds act like they own the place!

i have a 4am bird, a blackbird i think, that seems to think the dawn chorus starts an hour before it starts to get light

Little egrets are doing really well in the UK, with lots of nesting pairs.

Yesterday, I walked off a main road onto a grubby field edge and disturbed a buzzard. It was no more than five feet away and scared the shit out of me as it lifted almost soundlessly into the air. I investigated and found a mangled squirrel it had clearly been feasting on.

There were red kites flocking over a town in wales we were in, turns out a guy was feeding them lamb livers - my sister in law and her kids got to see them swooping down on to his lawn but my wife had just strapped our screaming child into the car so i missed out :(

They other day I saw a bunch of 8-10 corvids (crows and magpies I think) bullying a big bird of prey (probably a buzzard?) - the big chap was clearly trying to get away from them and they were swooping around it and pecking at it and it was quite a thing to see.

at the other end of the scale completely i saw housemartins near putney bridge on sunday. didn't see any digging up mud from the thames this time though, i guess it's a bit late for nest building.

(am seeing fewer magpies in the park at the moment, 1 or 2 rather than the usual 4 or 5. which i'm putting down to them nesting)

Yesterday I was walking through town and sat on a bench for a minute underneath the eaves of a building. There was a barn swallow sitting on a dangling arc of cable, kind of taking one step to the right, one step to the left, but not flying away and kind of keeping one eye on me. He was there long enough that I was able to take a picture of him, which surprised me. But then I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and realized there was a nest at the top of a column about 3 feet away from me, which he was guarding, so I got up and walked away, not wanting to disturb him and his family any further.

man magpies are assholes. there's a couple of them near me who will just NOT leave one of the neighbourhood cats alone. it's just this one cat. I don't know what he did. but he pops his head out and they're down there jawing at him. hopping towards him from two angles at once.

I saw a swift the other day, not sure what kind (black with white patches)... I don't think I've seen one here before, maybe it's migrating or something

I highly recommend the merlin app, which also allows you to identify the calls of birds. I've been having a lot of fun with it, a little endorphin rush when you id a new call you haven't before.

I got bopped in the back of the head by an aggressive red-winged blackbird yesterday. I've seen them swoop at people at the park before, but this is the first time I've had one make contact and draw blood.

the one thing i will say in favor of magpies is that they have a beautiful call

i was visiting my parents in australia recently & man, the sound of early-morning magpies really does it for me

swoopy & kinda scary to me otherwise

They're not a problem here in Tasmania, but a few years back in Canberra I was pinned in terror behind a tree while an aggressive and fast magpie waited for me to come out, after taking a couple of shots at me. I ended up running to the corner store with my arms folded over my head in "perp walk" style. Those guys are lethal.
Also a lot of the beautiful "magpie" calls you hear are actually butcher birds, not dangerous to people (although pitiless to lizards etc.).

beautiful call? they sound like machine guns!

northern hemisphere/european magpies aren't particularly closely related to australian magpies

this is a robin/robin deal

ahh

As I remember them, Australian magpies have an extraordinary range of calls and vocalisations - to the point where they're often kept in cages, iirr? When I was in WA, I remember chatting to a postman who had a cap with eyes drawn on the back, to deter angry magpies. Sheesh.

I know British magpies can be buggers but they do have an extraordinary vocal range of their own. Up close, they can burble, creak, gargle, burble and natter with the best of them.

Before I knew what the hell a Larsen trap* was, I was walking along a field edge and found a caged magpie. I instinctively knew it was transgressive but I let the poor bugger out anyway.

*a big cage in two parts for angry farmers, where you keep a corvid in one half and keep the other half open to lure other territorial corvids and bingo have two birds for the price of one.

there was a program about the Australian artist/poet Frieda Hughes on WS yesterday. She had a magpie friend called George who used to perch on her head while she was painting and play with her dogs. I can't imagine a UK magpie being like that.

I should add that I love magpies when they're not being psychos, I've seen parent birds with youngsters bugging them, fussing back, bickering, they're so personable and funny. And kind of terrifying, if they look you in the eye.

the Iberian Magpie which I saw loads of in Portugal has blue bits instead of white bits, which owns

oh wow

I got bopped in the back of the head by an aggressive red-winged blackbird yesterday. I've seen them swoop at people at the park before, but this is the first time I've had one make contact and draw blood.

Yeah we have some very aggressive red-winged blackbirds around my work, I got swooped at twice yesterday. Not enough to draw blood, but unsettling anyway.

there was a program about the Australian artist/poet Frieda Hughes on WS yesterday. She had a magpie friend called George who used to perch on her head while she was painting and play with her dogs. I can't imagine a UK magpie being like that.

She actually found and raised her magpie in Wales

I didn't pick up on that - was only half listening while doing the washing up. It sounded like she lived somewhere rural and assumed she was still living in Australia. I've heard stories before of people who develop friendships with wild birds and always enjoy this stuff. The closest I've ever got was one particular blackbird last summer that would spend a lot of time near me in the garden and this went on for weeks. But it would scarper to the hedge if I ever tried getting too close.

What happens when a bird decides it's ready to run a weather report on its own

[source, full story: https://t.co/1Mh9rSVlMC]pic.twitter.com/ZC6CxQC1m2

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 9, 2023

couple of weeks ago spotted an empty birds' nest in the parking lot of a nature preserve i frequent in LI.

today was informed that 1) it was an oriole's nest 2) it has since been destroyed by crows, and broken eggshells were found.

spotted an oriole today right by where the nest was, though. also, lots of crows.

Saw a very large owl sitting on the top of a power pole while driving to Target this past Sunday morning. Surprised me because I thought all owls were nocturnal. Then a couple of miles later I saw a hawk or large eagle come in for a landing on another power pole, and when we passed a small creek I saw a duck with a surprising amount of ducklings — eight or nine, it looked like — paddling around in the water.

Modey Lemon - Crows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=augVsAcmEH8

https://i.ibb.co/ygCC7Bt/IMG-20230615-183021721.jpg VERY active tern & piping plover nesting site at Stelhi Beach in Bayville attracted a huge film crew yesterday. or at least i assume they were there for the birds, i have no idea. saw dozens of terns and a few plovers, then a couple more plovers by adjacent preserve at Fox Point. captured some audio & video.

today saw a sparrow flying around inside the supermarket in Manhattan, but wasn't able to get a pic