Posted on 05/07/2016 11:01:28 AM PDT by Islander7
I had a pretty good morning. Hiked the Lake June Scrub State Park and good shots of the scrub jay and towhee. Came home to find the flycatcher posing in a ficus tree in our front yard; got his pic through the car window.
Took a bike ride and found a great egret, a snowy egret and tricolor heron in the same small stream. The snowy and the tricolor worked the great egret. They were positioned about 50 apart. The great egret spent his time trying to shoo off each of them. As one avoided the great egret, the other feasted on minnows. LOL! The great egret spent all his time and energy attempting to defend his stream from two conspiring free loaders.
Eastern Towhee
Florida Scrub Jay
Great Creasted Flycatcher
Tricolor Heron
Our backyard has been torrent of birds lately. Add to that the squirrels, swamp rabbits and occasionally a possum, we have our own wildlife habitat!
I retired in August. In January I started bird watching on a semi (but not entirely) serious basis. Since the first of the year I have logged 140 species on eBird, including one that had never been seen in the county before. It’s been fun. I get the wife out with me on most trips. We’ve enjoyed it.
On the side of my house I have two bird houses, one on each side of the garden window located over my kitchen sink and each house about 4 ft. from the window. The holes were drilled small so as only chickadees could fit in.
I then set up two mirrors in the window sill so that I could observe both houses while standing at my sink.
Anyway, for the past 3 weeks I've been watching a pair of chickadees flitting in and out from one house to the other. I'm not sure of their behavior but I think they are building nests in both houses until they decide on the one they want to rent............
It's been fun watching them work and I hope the outcome is better than last year when I stupidly took their house down to inspect the inside after not seeing them for a while. Turns out they had NINE eggs in it so I replaced it. They returned to the house only a couple of times before they abandoned it.......
Lesson learned, I'm leaving it alone for the season.........
So can anyone here school me on chickadee behavior regarding the two nests?
Another common summer resident is the Yellow Breasted Chat
You mentioned Kingfishers, I live close to a lake, Kingfishers are some of the most difficult birds to get close to, very wary of humans. This is another land bird that is difficult, we have at least 4 living nearby and I rarely get close enough for a decent shot. Roadrunner (female)
Those were taken with the Makinon 135mm lens, here's one with the Vivitar 200mm M42 I was bragging about above, taken at a North Louisiana lake several years ago. Snowy Egret just as it speared a shad.
Gotta go, might try to come back later and show off a few more. I'll try to dig up a Kingfisher shot. I get loads of ducks and water birds, I hang out on lakes a lot. Glad to see another competent photographer on here.
I have Carolina Chickadees nesting in at least one of my nesting boxes, Bluebirds in one, and probably Prothonotary Warblers in one. The Chickadees usually compete with the Bluebirds for at least one box.
I did a little poking around, here’s what I found. (quoted)
They will have several different nest site locations excavated before selecting the one they use.
Should predators become a problem, the nesting pair will abandon the nest and build a new one some distance away.
From here
http://www.wild-bird-watching.com/Chickadees.html
I don't like the robins either. In the spring, like now, it's enjoyable listening to the adults sing beginning about 4:00 a.m. but once their babies hatch, the babies are obnoxious whining little chirpers........
Chickadees are my favorite bird and I love listening to them in the morning. They have several songs that are pleasant to listen to. Add to that, unlike the damn robins, they stick around all year long while the robins head south.........most of them anyway.
I'd much rather have the chickadee as our Mich. state bird than robins.....
Up until 2013, I had only seen two Blue Birds my entire life and that was at the Stoney Creek golf course here in S.E. Michigan. In July of 2013, I went back up to Boyne City for my 45 year class reunion and I stayed at a friend of mine's house out in the country, overlooking a large valley. Darned if I didn't see at least a dozen blue birds around his property, most of them had nested in his fence post houses he had built for them...............that was cool.
Well, that’s what we named our butchering steer last year. Year before it was, ‘Supper.’
We should be getting our spring steer in a few weeks. I’m going for, ‘Weber’ (a brand of grill) this season. ;)
That explains it then. A few years ago I had set up a homemade birdhouse in the tree behind my neighbor's house which chickadees had begun to nest in. Two evenings in a row I saw a starling trying to get into the nest and the chickadees abandoned.
I moved that house and attached it to the side of my house outside of the window and all that summer I kept having to empty the nesting crap that the house sparrows were trying to take it over.
That's when I got the idea to make the entrance hole smaller, even smaller than what the damn house sparrows can get into..........In that respect, there hasn't been any further attempt by either sparrows or starlings to invade the houses.
Great shots, Islander!
We have those up here too. Nothing stays dead on the road long around here either.
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Maybe someone here can give me a suggestion on my problem. There is a male Cardinal,that can’t stop fighting his reflection in the window beside my bed. At first I threw some old white sheets over the azaleas bushes and he stopped. But after about a month the azaleas were beginning to look bad so I removed the sheets.
He came back again and wakes me up just before sunrise every morning.
I don’t have to get up that early and I don’t want to get up then. Short of putting rolling metal shutters over the window does anyone have any ideas?
The shutters would not be a bad idea because hurricane season will be here before we know it. But..........
Your photography is outstanding! Love seeing the pics.
I get chickadees in winter. First snow they show up, snow gone they leave. I have a feeder in the front yard. I give them sunflower seeds and peanut butter.
It has always blown me away. It could be below zero up here and snowing hard and you can hear them singing. They hit the feeder even at below zero.
They are fun to watch. One of my fav birds up here. They cannot stay in once place to long. Plus I like their paint job.
Gorgeous.
We have cardinals, tufted titmice, downy woodpeckers, goldfinch, red-bellied woodpeckers, purple finches, bluejays, nuthatches, chickadees, sparrows and juncos coming on to our deck in winter. We have other birds that don’t come to the deck or that are only here in the warm months: hairy woodpeckers, pileated woodpeckers, great barred owls, redtail hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, crows, rose-breasted grosbeaks, baltimore orioles, scarlet tanagers, blue herons, canada gueese, ruby throated hummingbirds,carolina wrens, phoebes, eastern towhee and cedar waxwings.
That is a great link. I learned much more about Chickadees than I have been able to find elsewhere. Now I know how they survive up here below zero.
I hope this works. Spoon bills at the rookery in High Island Texas.
Where is "here"?
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