Birding

[AndyinPA]

[northland10]

25 Funny Bird Pictures That Will Make You Squawk With Laughter
https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/ ... -pictures/

[AndyinPA]

[Flatpoint High]

Meet FLACO the Eurasian Eagle OWL The King of the UWS of NYC. And he didn't "escape". He was LIBERATED

[AndyinPA]

Cool!

A few years ago, we had a Steller's sea eagle escape the National Aviary here, but she wasn't free for that long. Maybe a few weeks or a month. It was neat watching the coverage while she was free,

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

We have a visitor this morning. Can anyone ID? Great Grey please pick up the courtesy phone….

IMG_5917.jpeg (295.67 KiB) Viewed 424 times

[Chilidog]

[northland10]

The juncos at my place (during the winter, of course) are usually ground pounders and feed on the stuff tossed from the feeder. This year, more of them have been going to the feeder.

Strange year (is 57 degrees in February).

[northland10]

We have a visitor this morning. Can anyone ID? Great Grey please pick up the courtesy phone….IMG_5917.jpeg

Barred Owl?

Great Grey? Chilidog?

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

We have a visitor this morning. Can anyone ID? Great Grey please pick up the courtesy phone….IMG_5917.jpeg

Barred Owl?

Great Grey? Chilidog?

My sister said it was a barred owl.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

We have lots of dark eyed juncos here. They eat everywhere.

[Chilidog]

We have a visitor this morning. Can anyone ID? Great Grey please pick up the courtesy phone….IMG_5917.jpeg

Barred Owl?

Great Grey? Chilidog?

concur barred

[pipistrelle]

We have a visitor this morning. Can anyone ID? Great Grey please pick up the courtesy phone….IMG_5917.jpeg

Barred Owl?

Great Grey? Chilidog?

concur barred

I thought barred, assuming it’s dark eyed, and it’s clearly not a barn owl. I was confirming there aren’t any other likely dark-eyed candidates and as a side note found out there have been some dark-eyed burrowing owls. This is the first I’ve seen them.

https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2542 ... os/3902076

[Shizzle Popped]

IMG_6427 copy.jpg (144.24 KiB) Viewed 311 times

I walked into the living room (aka. Mrs. Shizzle's sewing room) earlier to find a Cooper's hawk sitting in the tree just outside the window. Those windows are filmed since they're west facing and are not low-e, which allowed me to walk right up the window and take a few pictures.

[AndyinPA]

Wow!

[northland10]

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Gold finches! I gotz gold finches. I have NEVER had them before!

[qbawl]

It's okay. Take two aspirin and call a doctor if a fever or swelling ensues.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

It's okay. Take two aspirin and call a doctor if a fever or swelling ensues.

[Shizzle Popped]

We had a female Eastern Bluebird hanging around the feeders today. Well, at least until it started snowing hard and a group of starlings flew in and chased all the other birds away. My wife won’t let me shoot at the starlings with the pellet gun. I’m not sure why.

[northland10]

We had a female Eastern Bluebird hanging around the feeders today. Well, at least until it started snowing hard and a group of starlings flew in and chased all the other birds away. My wife won’t let me shoot at the starlings with the pellet gun. I’m not sure why.

If you had starling nests, you could remove the eggs and nests without any consequences (same with house sparrows) because they are invasive species. Apparently killing them is rarely much use because there are so many.

They might not like noise so you might get them to run off if you startle them with sound. At my place, especially in the spring, we get the invasive species war where house sparrows and European starlings get all nasty at each other for trying to dominate the area. It works best when they both chase each other off (albeit temporarily) so the finches can then pop in for a snack.

[pipistrelle]

We had a female Eastern Bluebird hanging around the feeders today. Well, at least until it started snowing hard and a group of starlings flew in and chased all the other birds away. My wife won’t let me shoot at the starlings with the pellet gun. I’m not sure why.

If you had starling nests, you could remove the eggs and nests without any consequences (same with house sparrows) because they are invasive species. Apparently killing them is rarely much use because there are so many.

Fun fact from Cornell's All About Birds:

All the European Starlings in North America descended from 100 birds set loose in New York's Central Park in the early 1890s. The birds were intentionally released by a group who wanted America to have all the birds that Shakespeare ever mentioned. It took several tries, but eventually the population took off. Today, more than 200 million European Starlings range from Alaska to Mexico, and many people consider them pests.

Because of their recent arrival in North America, all of our starlings are closely related. Genetically, individuals from Virginia are nearly indistinguishable from starlings sampled in California, 3,000 miles away. Such little genetic variation often spells trouble for rare species, but seems to offer no ill effects to starlings so far.

[Shizzle Popped]

I don't mind feeding any of the other birds because they all seem to be able to more or less peacefully coexist with each other. The starlings come in groups of 20 to 40 and hog everything forcing all the other birds out and then they hang out for a long time.

When we lived in Illinois we had a pool and starlings would build nests in a pair of blue spruce we had at the back corners. When their eggs hatched they would clean out the nest and dump the contents in the pool. Lovely. That's when I declared war on them and started knocking nests down when they started building them. After that they tried building nests in my BBQ grill. My response was to light the grill and set their house on fire. I had to do that several times before they finally took the hint and stayed away from the grill. I always checked to make sure there were no eggs but by that time I'm not sure it would have altered my response. Nasty birds.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

That's when I declared war on them and started knocking nests down when they started building them. After that they tried building nests in my BBQ grill. My response was to light the grill and set their house on fire. I had to do that several times before they finally took the hint and stayed away from the grill. I always checked to make sure there were no eggs but by that time I'm not sure it would have altered my response. Nasty birds.

Uhm...you might want to talk to a therapist....just sayin'.

[RTH10260]

Just add some bacon to the eggs and everything will be fine for breakfast