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Got this eagle a while back near our pond..
We have a beautiful pileated hanging around our neighborhood. Amazing birds.
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Got this eagle a while back near our pond..
Caught a baby cardinal getting its first tour of the neighborhood and some lunch from Dad a little while ago.
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Bird memes...
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This guy...strutting around the neighborhood like he owns the place.
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bumping the thread to commemorate the purchase yesterday of an amazingly lovely Duke blue ceramic bird bath....marvelously attractive, it was designed and built in Switzerland by a leading sculptor, we were lucky to get one!*
* nonsense, of course...but it IS really nice, so nice we thought it deserved a back story...similar to this one, but even nicer:https://www.farmstore.com/product/ta...amic-bird-bath
I'm going out in the field this AM with a biologist I know to help* band kestrels. I'll try to remember to take a few pictures and report back to this thread.
*And by help, I mean stand around and watch.
that's cool...for the past three years, including this one, we've had nesting kestrels on our property...early in the season they make a racket every day, flying around and making their distinctive call...it then appears (by observation only, I'm no kestrel expert) that they're quiet, probably doing the nesting thing...and pretty soon we'll have 3-4 of them flying around making a bunch of noise. Great annual visitors...look forward to seeing any pictures...(the male often sits on the top of a dead tree for hours at a time, just hanging in the sunshine)...
Here are some pictures from the morning kestrel survey ---
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The lock stick in the cavity is a video device so the biologist can look on her phone to see the count before getting the chicks out.
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The bands that get placed on the legs.
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do mom and dad kick up a fuss, or do you do it while they're out shopping? Kestrels have become neighborhood favorites with us...I can hear them even with the windows closed...
Now have a pair of Mountain Bluebirds nesting under the deck, which is 9-10 feet above the ground. Never dreamed we would have this happen, although they are common in our neighborhood. Other nests near our house include violet-green swallows by the front door, American robins in various places, and house wrens in a nest box by the driveway.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Saw a Canada Warbler hiking over the weekend. Had an Eastern Towhee at the feeder today as well.
My wife keeps asking me where are all the hummingbirds this year. She's got her new feeders out and we haven't seen a solitary bird.
I visited a friend (at safe social distancing on the porch) over the weekend. My wife and I were there for maybe 20 minutes. She had two hummingbird feeders hung up on the porch. During the time we were there, I saw maybe 15 or 20 of them. They kept flying up, getting really close to the feeder, and then flying away. Once in a while one would land and feed briefly. Many of them flew up repeatedly, obviously, the effect of which was that approximately every 10-15 seconds a hummingbird would come up close to us.
They were all over the place! I can't remember seeing that much hummingbird activity before. Anywhere. My friend told me that it is like that pretty much all the time at her house, and that they will awaken her if the feeders have run out of nectar and she has forgotten to refill them.
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust