BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016

Subject: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 13 Feb 16 - 01:51 PM

This weekend is the time for the Great Backyard Bird Count, conducted by Cornell University. My Dear Husband and I are setting up for our first 15 minutes right now.

If you like birds, consider joining. Read about it here:

http://gbbc.birdcount.org/?utm_source=Cornell+Lab+eNews&utm_campaign=791d17d813-Cornell_Lab_eNews_2016_02_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_47588b5758-791d17d813-277532937

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: keberoxu
Date: 13 Feb 16 - 01:55 PM

....squirrels going after the bird-feeders....

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: gnu
Date: 13 Feb 16 - 01:56 PM

Just saw this... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/science/experience-science-count-birds-from-your-backyard.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: maeve
Date: 13 Feb 16 - 02:57 PM

Too cold here. Only chickadees have been at the feeders. Haven't even seen the eagles or ravens today- even the blankety-blank red and gray squirrels think it's too cold to be out. Should I count opossum or mink? :D

It's a good program though. I enjoy taking part.

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: gillymor
Date: 13 Feb 16 - 03:11 PM

I'm in, thanks for the heads up. We had a record amount of rain in January here in SWFL (thanks to El Nino) and the canals, creeks and swales that usually run low in winter, our dry season, are full of water and consequently full of wading and water birds.

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: Janie
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 09:14 AM

Blue clicky for leenia's link. Great Backyard Bird Count

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 10:24 AM

Looked out of the window just in time for a huge hail storm. By observation, there are no birds.

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: Sooz
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 11:50 AM

The RSPB do this every year here in UK. However, we have noticed that our garden birds are fully aware of the dates and they hide over the designated weekend!

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 08:43 PM

Gillymor, the wading and water birds sound wonderful. I would love to see them.

The DH and I counted birds four times this weekend, 15 minutes each. Nothing spectacular happened. We saw

house sparrows (aliens)
house finches (a/k/a raspberry sparrows)
cardinals
blue jays
juncos
an American robin
mourning doves
starlings
a lone chickadee

It was fun, and it was fun to look at the map of contributors and see a lone individual in Svalbard, miles north of Norway up in the Arctic.

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Feb 16 - 09:16 PM

Starling, jay, blackbird, sparrow, dunnock, song thrush, blackcap, chiffchaff, magpie, rook, common crow, jackdaw, wood pigeon, blue tit, great tit, long-tailed tit, redwing. fieldfare, sparrowhawk, common buzzard, greenfinch, goldfinch, wren, coal tit, greater spotted woodpecker, pied wagtail. Our winter dinosaur assortment!

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: My guru always said
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 03:45 AM

We do the RSPB bird count every year, it was a couple of weeks ago. Ours lasts for an hour and you count the maximum of each type of bird you see. As always, as soon as I submitted my results online, the Long-tailed Tits came for their breakfast *sigh*

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: gillymor
Date: 15 Feb 16 - 05:22 PM

Yes leeneia, with this high water down here you can pull over next to a roadside canal right now and you might see gallinules, grebes, moorhens, coots, woodstorks, various ducks, various herons, anhingas and even cormorants which usually stay closer to the coast.

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 05:37 AM

I suppose this does not add up to a great deal but, during the year, the following have been seen in or above our garden and we are very glad to have seen them.

Robins
Wrens
Blackbirds
Starlings
Thrushes
House Sparrows
Dunnetts
Blue Tits
Coal Tits
Long Tail Tits
Green Woodpecker
Chaffinches
Heron (He had a £35 breakfast from our pool)
Wood Pigeons
Common Pigeons
Doves (From a fancier in the village)
Various Gulls (Flying overhead)
Swallows (Flying overhead)
Buzzard (Flying overhead. There are some pairs in a wooded area to
          the east near Heaverham)

And a number I could not identify as they swiftly dart in and out of the pines at the back.

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 05:46 AM

The RSPB count comes at exactly the time when we have the lowest number of species 1100 feet up in the Pennines! Usually turns out to be a couple of crows and a magpie and a shivering blackbird.
A fortnight later we have had the first skylark singing, meadow pippits, goldfinches, robins, great tits etc.

Subject: RE: BS: do the Great Backyard bird count
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 07:30 AM

I forgot two others.
Magpies
Thrushes

Subject: BS: Birdwatching 2016
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 11:24 PM

I don't see a 2016 birdwatching thread, and it's about time.
I have wonderful bird experiences near my home in Northern California, but just now I'm visiting my 96-year-old dad at his nursing home in Sarasota, Florida. I guess I have to admit that Florida birdwatching may be better than what I've found in California.

My dad's nursing home is surrounded by fair-sized ponds, and his favorite pastime here is watching and feeding the birds. On a usual day, we'll see two varieties each of herons and egrets, lots of comical ibises, ducks and ducklings, and usually an anhinga drying its wings in the breeze. But this time, we've been seeing a pair of bald eagles almost every day.

Lunch today was amazing. We sat outside by the pond, and saw nothing. Then two ospreys appeared, swooping high and low and sometimes diving into the water. And then I think it was a tern that appeared, doing spiral dives into the lake to catch fish or whatever it was catching. All of a sudden, a bald eagle swooped in - and one of the ospreys started chasing it. The eagle found a tree to perch in, and stayed there all day. A second eagle waded on the shore of the pond in the evening, and then flew off.

And then I went to my dad's condo, where my sister is living now. The condo is on the Intracoastal Waterway, so I went there to watch the sunset, and saw some sort of raptor catch a fish and fly off with it.

Oh, and yesterday I watched the sunset inland at Myakka River State Park, and I saw birds flying low above the water at the shoreline of the lake, comically dragging their bills in the water - I think they were Black Skimmers.

My sister has ALS and can't talk. She spends about two hours a day with my dad, usually feeding the birds or just sitting and watching. I think it keeps both of them alive. Life is tough for both of them, but watching the birds takes away all their pain. I'm glad I have been able to share in this for the last week.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 12:55 AM

Thanks, Jeri, better to combine threads, I think. Sure was a good day for birds in Florida today.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 03:39 AM

Saw a sikin for the first time yesterday in our back garden.
Collared doves, usually four (with the most boring though evocative calls) are regular visitor.
Robin's and wrens nest in the few bushed around the garden.
You can set your clock to the herons heading home each night.
Blue, great and goldfinches abound along with the extremely eccentric wagtails.
Look forward to the swallows (they've been sighted in our neighbouring counties of Galway and Kerry, but not made it to Clare yet).
Was delighted to see a sparrowhawk once perched on a fence about six feet from our window, but it didn't stop me shooing it off (unfortunately, not before it snatched a sparrow)
Autumn will bring the spectacular displays of starlings filling our sky and stopping the traffic.
Not too bad for a part of Ireland with no trees!
We're dealing with a bereavement at present - a hedgehog has crawled onto our pile of cut grass and died (think it's dead - will give it a few days in case it's still hibernating)
Saw (or rather, heard) two of them having it off at the back of the house one night - no shame!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 12:52 PM

Ah poor little hedgehog Jim. We have a hedgehog hospital fairly near us, and the lady has open days. She has an albino one. Apparently, they get lungworm which is often fatal. Also, strimmers sometimes slice off a leg. We have a hedgehog, but I only know because I've seen its poo on our lawn!

Has anyone in UK noticed that there seems to be a much larger population of swans this year? We live near a string of lakes, and the swans are really up in numbers. Ditto all kinds of geese.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 01:42 PM

"Ah poor little hedgehog Jim. "
We buried it this afternoon with full honours.
Oddest experience we ever had with a hedgehog was on a fairly busy urban street just off the A3 in Putney, West London.
Pat and I were cycling along the road when she spotted a Prawn Cracker packet scuttling down the pavement - it turned out to be a hedgehog jammed in head-first finishing off the contents.
We gently moved it into one of the gardens
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 01:44 PM

Oh! Jim that is HILARIOUS.

Subject: RE: BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016
From: gnu
Date: 02 May 16 - 01:31 PM

Two on the south coast of NB so far. Feeders go up soon. http://www.hummingbirds.net/map.html

Subject: RE: BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 03 May 16 - 05:14 AM

Was delighted to see a sparrowhawk once perched on a fence about six feet from our window, but it didn't stop me shooing it off (unfortunately, not before it snatched a sparrow)

I'll sacrifice a few sparrows, tits or finches for a hawk. Hawks have got to make a living.

We have had some visits from a sparrowhawk in recent weeks. Once, it was sitting on the tray of the bird feeder. I didn't see if it had caught anything but, rather than shooing it away, I sat quietly admiring it. It didn't stop the smaller birds from returning to the feeder within minutes of its departure.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Great Backyard bird count - birdwatching 2016
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Dec 16 - 03:18 AM

From late August to early November, I made a wandering tour of the United States. I hit 31 states and covered 15,000 miles. I saw some wonderful birds along the way - egrets in the Arkansas River in Wichita, Pelicans in the Missouri at Great Falls, and Sandhill Cranes in a freeway cloverleaf at Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I think I saw a golden eagle outside Tomahawk, Wisconsin, but the jury is out on that.
But I really wanted to see three animals on this trip, and I didn't do very well:

• A Mountain Goat (I went to Glacier National Park, but the only mountain goat I saw was a stuffed one in a museum in Great Falls
• An Armadillo (I saw 3 roadkill armadillos in the south, but no live ones)
• A roadrunner. That was the big one. I drove through a lot of desert, but didn't see a roadrunner I could positively identify. I think that three times I saw a flash across the road that was most probably a bird, but that's all I could see. Is that all you see with them - a blur? I met two women at Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona and expressed my disappointment to them, and they exclaimed that they had seen a roadrunner on a nearby post just ten minutes earlier. I went there, and saw nothing. So, friends, tell me, what do you see when you see a roadrunner? Should I expect something more than the blur I saw?

I did see a rattlesnake and a couple alligators, so that was cool.
-Joe-