@yakkoTDI Kestrels are gorgeous. My wife and I were driving and I saw one sitting on a fence post. He let us watch him for a bit from about 10 feet away before he left. I never realized how many colors they actually have until I saw that one take flight from up close.
I saw a green heron once. That’s another beautiful bird.
@kittykat9180@lordbowen They’re wicked smart! Once one was repeatedly dropping a whole walnut from a streetlight across from us until it finally broke open. Apparently he does that a lot because quite a mess accumulates. I have to say they can be fun to watch.
Robin.
I used to have one I’d see in the front yard almost every day in the early spring. Gave me a good feeling about winter’s coming demise. It was a fixture for several years.
Haven’t seen it in a couple of years. (About the same time I started having cats around a lot. Coincidence?)
I also have mockingbirds, blue jays, and the occasional cardinal. All of them try pilfering the cat food in the back. And quite a few grackles patrolling my yard for insects. Their feathers sure add color to my lawn,
@tweezak there’s a sizable flock of them in the neighborhood that we love until they steal all the cherries from the cherry tree before they’re actually ripe enough to pick… still, it’s hard to be mad at them
@ybmuG I was speaking from an aesthetic standpoint but yes, ravaging your cherry tree would tend to make them a little less appealing. It’s possible, however, that the presence of the tree is probably the only reason you get to watch them at all.
I see a lot of bluejays - they’re cheeky devils but fun to watch. I love hearing robins and occasionally I see some goldfinches or little red-headed woodpeckers. I wish the cedar waxwings came around but I haven’t seen them for years.
There are two hawks that have been coming to my back yard every day lately to eat bugs. Sometimes it’s just one and sometimes it’s the pair. They swoop down, and run around the lawn eating bugs and worms, then they fly off. They also aren’t bothered by my presence. They just look at me disapprovingly when I go outside.
Here’s one of them:
Anybody know what species it is? In North Carolina.
I love them all, but i have a special place in my heart for robins, since i rescued one as a kid. I have a pair that loves to build nests in the rafters of the pergola that covers my walkway, right near the big gate that leads to the driveway, which is a little dicey when coming & going.
They already fledged a brood right before i got home from being away for 4 months, so i knocked down the nest (because i read that they won’t reuse them) & they built another one within days. They’re industrious little creatures!
@ircon96 I used to have a birdcall ringtone on my cellphone; it was a robin. I loved it but when I switched to my iPhone I couldn’t figure out how to get it again. It was fun how confused people would get when it chirped!
@Kyeh That’s hilarious! It might have been even more entertaining if you had one that added fluttering wings, so especially nervous people would dive for cover! I’ve had a couple of poor birds that got stuck in my enclosed porch & that sound sure is startling when you’re not expecting it!
@ahacksaw@shampshire Until I read your post, I had forgotten:
At my previous home, I walked my dog through the back alley, as part of the regular circuit. There was a large and great smelling honeysuckle plant along one wooden fence.
At the present place (4 years now), there are no such plants in the vicinity, that I am aware of.
Didn’t realize that I had been missing it!
At a previous house (until about 3 decades ago), I had honeysuckle growing from my side across a chain link fence. I loved watching the bees, butterflies, and occasional rabbit visiting those plants. I also enjoyed the aroma. The property owner on the other side there removed ALL the honeysuckle, without conferring at all. Pissed me off. I let it go, though, because she was an unfriendly grouch anyway, and besides, I could hardly ask her to replant it.
@hchavers When we first moved into our neighborhood (brand new builds) all we had were Killdeer; which are loud and obnoxious birds!
I started planting trees the first week in the house and now, 9 years later, we have a nice variety of backyard birds. All sorts of finches, swallows, morning doves, robins, woodpeckers… and, of course, starlings. Ugh.
I’ll give a plug for the Merlin app from Cornell Labs. Identifies birds from sounds and even pictures though they have to be pretty clear. We’ve found it to be pretty accurate. And it identified an indigo bunting recently which we’ve only seen once several years ago.
/image indigo bunting
My favorite bird in my neighborhood is the Mocking Bird that greets me when I come home from the gym at night. The variety of bird calls he makes is amazing. Everything from a simple chirp to sounding like an exotic bird in the tropics. I made a 6 minute recording of his calls and play it back to him as I walk by. It’s so fascinating how him mimics the recording. No idea what is being communicated, but he doesn’t seem phased by it.
@capnjb We keep some chickens. There are hawks, eagles and owls in the (rural) neighborhood. When a large bird flies over, the roosters make a peculiar moaning sound (kind of reminds me of the muted “Ahhh…” sound the crowd makes at a pro golf match) and the flock runs for cover.
It’s kind of funny to watch, particularly if it’s just a raven or blue jay that sparks a false alarm. Sometimes they even do it when I toss a frisbee for the dog. Can’t be too careful, I guess.
@Oldelvis You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, but those birds are Troglodytes!
(scientific naming is weird sometimes)
Fwiw, your link is to a page on the Eurasian wren. Wikipedia says their range does not extend into North America.
The official house wren looks (and sounds) very similar to me (I don’t think I would be able to tell them apart) and covers the Americas.
We see an amazing variety of birds especially considering we don’t even have a yard, just a three foot strip of grass between our road and the one behind us. We have feeders that attract sparrows, bluejays, doves, grackles, starlings, catbirds, brown headed cowbirds, assorted woodpeckers, occasional mockingbirds, and very rarely blue birds. Currently the cardinals and finches are feeding their fledglings out here and boy are they noisy. Hummingbirds have not been around much this summer but I’ll continue to put out sugar water.
Having all those birds brings the hawks when they can’t find food elsewhere, usually coopers.
I saw a gorgeous cardinal yesterday, so I chose that in the poll, but we have hawks that show up occasionally, and they’re magnificent. My favorite neighborhood bird to hear, though, is the mourning dove.
@ahacksaw@cbatte Mourning doves are one of my favorites, too! Not only do they sound beautiful, but they clean up the mess left by all the other birds that fight over the feeders!
@mycya4me Aww, he’s adorable, is that a blue crane? That place looks great, i want to go to there. I posted the owl cuz i thought you were quoting the America’s Best mascot from one of their ads.
@ircon96@Kyeh Thank You!, The photo group I shoot with, Well lets say they push you to be better. Yes we kid each other about the camera they shoot with. (Richmond Photo Meetup Group- RPMG) we have a Facebook page too, the Meetup page is paid. But you get so much back. Also My user name is the same for Instagram. I will be uploading some more stuff soon!
@fibrs86 Uh-oh, need better leave those robins alone! Lol… I’m jealous, tho, cuz my robins insist on building their nests up in the rafters where i can’t see them. Next, they’re probably going to get a restraining order.
We’ve got a pileated woodpecker that loves the utility pole in the back yard. When we hung up a suet feeder recently he immediately went for it, but I haven’t seen him at it lately.
There a family (families?) of quail that have been around for decades. It’s fun to watch them grow up.
Just one or two humming birds, rather plain colors.
A pair of doves.
Loads of little sparrows and such. We don’t seem to attract many robins. But we do attract some stray cats, never seen them get lucky though.
@blaineg I have at least one woodpecker that loves the corners of my roof, the part that just happens to cover the section of the house where i spend most of my time. I had to hang mylar ribbon to save what’s left of my sanity. It seems to work really well, apparently anything shiny that blows in the wind freaks them out. I’m just glad the solution was something cheap! (Or, should i say “cheep”? Ok, I’ll see myself out…)
@blaineg@ircon96 Once I was hiking in the forest land behind my place. There is a main electric distribution line that runs through it, with four main lines attached to big metal towers. As I walked by a tower, I heard a loud metallic groaning sound and my first panicked thought was “Oh crap - the tower is collapsing!” Then on closer inspection I realized the sound was a woodpecker pecking on one of the struts of the tower. It was incredibly loud and resonant.
Stupid bird.
@blaineg@Kyeh@macromeh Yes! I found out they also love metal when one started drumming on a vent cap on the other side of my roof. It freaked me out at first, i thought my water heater was about to explode or something! That’s how loud it sounded in the house. Luckily, he decided to move on before too long, cuz I’m not quite sure how i would have deterred him from that particular spot!
@blaineg@ircon96@Kyeh@macromeh I can relate. My house has a floating steel roof. About five or so years ago, a pileated woodpecker seemed fixated on the roof and kept testing out spots to do some drumming. It was irritating, but he finally found a spot on an edge that made a big chunk of the roof vibrate and make a hideous creaking noise. Either it worked to impress a mate, or the sound scared even him, because he stopped after that.
One year I also had a pileated woodpecker that found a way to drink from a hummingbird feeder. The first time I saw him was early before my morning coffee. My first fuzzy thought was that there was a tabby cat hanging from the feeder, and wondering how it got there. Since the openings were too small, he would just hang from the feeder, grab a port bee guard and “flower” and toss them away. I finally solved that by switching to feeders with slit openings with no detachable covers, then raising the feeder up under a plastic cone.
@blaineg@ircon96@macromeh@rockblossom–for some reason I was under the impression that you were in CA but from your local birds I realize you must not be.
I’ve never seen a pileated woodpecker - they look huge in the pictures online!
We just get little guys around here. Although we also have flickers; they drum on the house sometimes.
@Kyeh Pileateds are slightly smaller than a domestic crow, so pretty big.
I’m in the Arkansas Ozarks, where it’s either Tick Season or Ice Storm Season. Last week they overlapped, and I now have a new task on my list of things to do: replace two window screens that got shredded by hail. I just hope the killer hail managed to take out a few ticks.
@rockblossom
Oh, no! We’ve had unnaturally rainy stormy weather in CO so lots of ticks and mosquitoes .
Hail, not too large in my neighborhood, but up to softball sized farther east. The poor concert audience at Red Rocks got pelted with heavy hail Wednesday night.
And they actually had a tornado in a town near Denver on Thursday!
I’m surprised that this has been up for a day and a half and no one has said: “Chickens and turkeys, on the backyard grill.” - or some equivalent.
I have backyard turkeys but they are feathered and mobile. They can be irritatingly loud, but not as annoying as the brown thrashers that land on my bedroom windowsill before dawn and announce themselves. Loudly.
@Kyeh Mockingbirds, catbirds, and thrashers are all in the family Mimidae. Thrashers are dressed in country brown while the other two sport more formal grays. All of the bird books say thrashers are “hard to spot” - which isn’t true when there are a dozen wandering around my yard. They are also described as “exuberant singers” - which I heartily agree with, if “exuberant” means both non-stop and loud. And they live here year-round.
A park across the street from my former work office is apparently a favorite stop for migrating Canadian geese. As you might imagine, you have to keep an eye to the sky when walking around the park, lest you get bombed.
I left my door open just now while I was cleaning my hummingbird feeder. Came back inside to find a catbird sitting on my kitchen floor. We looked at each other and he flew outside.
Anyway we have lots of catbirds and they like my feeders. So I like them. Plus they meow.
@sammydog01 You should hear what grackles can do. The ones around the University of Houston parking lots can imitate car alarms faithfully. It’s slightly unnerving to hear one gong off in the top of a tree.
Kestrel or Falcon.
@yakkoTDI Kestrels are gorgeous. My wife and I were driving and I saw one sitting on a fence post. He let us watch him for a bit from about 10 feet away before he left. I never realized how many colors they actually have until I saw that one take flight from up close.
I saw a green heron once. That’s another beautiful bird.
Crows.
@lordbowen
Or Ravens
@lordbowen, I hate crows. Little bastards they are.
@kittykat9180 @lordbowen They’re wicked smart! Once one was repeatedly dropping a whole walnut from a streetlight across from us until it finally broke open. Apparently he does that a lot because quite a mess accumulates. I have to say they can be fun to watch.
@lordbowen @tweezak, they are the smartest bird, I believe. And have incredible memories.
They’re also bastards.
Owl.
@narfcake Who?
We get acorn woodpeckers when I have a nut cylinder hanging in the yard.
@tweezak We have a Downy Woodpecker couple that loves our suet feeder.
Robin.
I used to have one I’d see in the front yard almost every day in the early spring. Gave me a good feeling about winter’s coming demise. It was a fixture for several years.
Haven’t seen it in a couple of years. (About the same time I started having cats around a lot. Coincidence?)
I also have mockingbirds, blue jays, and the occasional cardinal. All of them try pilfering the cat food in the back. And quite a few grackles patrolling my yard for insects. Their feathers sure add color to my lawn,
We see eagles, parents and kids, on the lake where our rustic cabin is in Massachusetts. They’ve been there for years.
I have seen cedar waxwings when I’m on a walk but never in the yard. They are my favorite bird.
@tweezak there’s a sizable flock of them in the neighborhood that we love until they steal all the cherries from the cherry tree before they’re actually ripe enough to pick… still, it’s hard to be mad at them
@ybmuG I was speaking from an aesthetic standpoint but yes, ravaging your cherry tree would tend to make them a little less appealing. It’s possible, however, that the presence of the tree is probably the only reason you get to watch them at all.
@tweezak we typically hear them if we don’t see them and so far my hearing isn’t so shot i can’t hear their call.
@tweezak @ybmuG
They make a wonderful kind of trill!
I see a lot of bluejays - they’re cheeky devils but fun to watch. I love hearing robins and occasionally I see some goldfinches or little red-headed woodpeckers. I wish the cedar waxwings came around but I haven’t seen them for years.
There are two hawks that have been coming to my back yard every day lately to eat bugs. Sometimes it’s just one and sometimes it’s the pair. They swoop down, and run around the lawn eating bugs and worms, then they fly off. They also aren’t bothered by my presence. They just look at me disapprovingly when I go outside.
Here’s one of them:
Anybody know what species it is? In North Carolina.
@awk Broad winged hawk is my guess.
Hummingbirds. If there’s two, they chase each other.
@pooflady They’re really aggressive little fighters!
@Kyeh @pooflady I have 4 feeders on my patio and it’s endless entertainment. They are ridiculous creatures.
This one.
Swallows
Roadrunner
I love them all, but i have a special place in my heart for robins, since i rescued one as a kid. I have a pair that loves to build nests in the rafters of the pergola that covers my walkway, right near the big gate that leads to the driveway, which is a little dicey when coming & going.
They already fledged a brood right before i got home from being away for 4 months, so i knocked down the nest (because i read that they won’t reuse them) & they built another one within days. They’re industrious little creatures!
@ircon96 I used to have a birdcall ringtone on my cellphone; it was a robin. I loved it but when I switched to my iPhone I couldn’t figure out how to get it again. It was fun how confused people would get when it chirped!
@Kyeh That’s hilarious! It might have been even more entertaining if you had one that added fluttering wings, so especially nervous people would dive for cover! I’ve had a couple of poor birds that got stuck in my enclosed porch & that sound sure is startling when you’re not expecting it!
I have a large honeysuckle plant that smells amazing and brings dozens of hummingbirds to my back deck. They are lovely.
@shampshire Honeysuckle is just about the best smell in the world. It’s all over my neighborhood, and it makes walking the dogs much more enjoyable.
@ahacksaw @shampshire Until I read your post, I had forgotten:
At my previous home, I walked my dog through the back alley, as part of the regular circuit. There was a large and great smelling honeysuckle plant along one wooden fence.
At the present place (4 years now), there are no such plants in the vicinity, that I am aware of.
Didn’t realize that I had been missing it!
At a previous house (until about 3 decades ago), I had honeysuckle growing from my side across a chain link fence. I loved watching the bees, butterflies, and occasional rabbit visiting those plants. I also enjoyed the aroma. The property owner on the other side there removed ALL the honeysuckle, without conferring at all. Pissed me off. I let it go, though, because she was an unfriendly grouch anyway, and besides, I could hardly ask her to replant it.
Favorite is the hummingbird. But all we get are loud, flocking grackles.
@hchavers When we first moved into our neighborhood (brand new builds) all we had were Killdeer; which are loud and obnoxious birds!
I started planting trees the first week in the house and now, 9 years later, we have a nice variety of backyard birds. All sorts of finches, swallows, morning doves, robins, woodpeckers… and, of course, starlings. Ugh.
/image Baltimore Oriole
@ybmuG Where’s its cap?
@phendrick someone stole it and is selling it on ebay
I’ll give a plug for the Merlin app from Cornell Labs. Identifies birds from sounds and even pictures though they have to be pretty clear. We’ve found it to be pretty accurate. And it identified an indigo bunting recently which we’ve only seen once several years ago.
/image indigo bunting
@ybmuG Birdnet works great for identifying birds by sound too.
@callow @ybmuG I have a birdnetpi setup for my amusement.
@callow @fibrs86 as in it runs off a Raspberry Pi? That would be an interesting project
Nope…stay focused…don’t need another unfinished project…
@callow @ybmuG yes, it’s made to run on a raspberry pi, but due to supply issues my setup is using a Le Potato.
My favorite bird in my neighborhood is the Mocking Bird that greets me when I come home from the gym at night. The variety of bird calls he makes is amazing. Everything from a simple chirp to sounding like an exotic bird in the tropics. I made a 6 minute recording of his calls and play it back to him as I walk by. It’s so fascinating how him mimics the recording. No idea what is being communicated, but he doesn’t seem phased by it.
We had a pair of ducks that would come every year and enjoy our swampy back yard, but I have not seen them now for a couple years.
Now we have a flock of turkeys that has kind of taken over. There’s about a dozen of them. They’re huge!
/image wild turkey
We back to woods and occasionally have Cooper’s hawks come through. You can tell when they are around because all the other birds aren’t.
@capnjb We keep some chickens. There are hawks, eagles and owls in the (rural) neighborhood. When a large bird flies over, the roosters make a peculiar moaning sound (kind of reminds me of the muted “Ahhh…” sound the crowd makes at a pro golf match) and the flock runs for cover.
It’s kind of funny to watch, particularly if it’s just a raven or blue jay that sparks a false alarm. Sometimes they even do it when I toss a frisbee for the dog. Can’t be too careful, I guess.
House wren. Little bird with a wonderful song. https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/wren/
@Oldelvis You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, but those birds are Troglodytes!
(scientific naming is weird sometimes)
Fwiw, your link is to a page on the Eurasian wren. Wikipedia says their range does not extend into North America.
The official house wren looks (and sounds) very similar to me (I don’t think I would be able to tell them apart) and covers the Americas.
@xobzoo to be fair, I am on Holiday in Great Britain, hence the Eurasain reference
We see an amazing variety of birds especially considering we don’t even have a yard, just a three foot strip of grass between our road and the one behind us. We have feeders that attract sparrows, bluejays, doves, grackles, starlings, catbirds, brown headed cowbirds, assorted woodpeckers, occasional mockingbirds, and very rarely blue birds. Currently the cardinals and finches are feeding their fledglings out here and boy are they noisy. Hummingbirds have not been around much this summer but I’ll continue to put out sugar water.
Having all those birds brings the hawks when they can’t find food elsewhere, usually coopers.
I LOVE to shoot them, With a Camera of course! No Firearms or like devices that kill them!
I saw a gorgeous cardinal yesterday, so I chose that in the poll, but we have hawks that show up occasionally, and they’re magnificent. My favorite neighborhood bird to hear, though, is the mourning dove.
@ahacksaw I love it when the mourning doves are nearby. Their song is so relaxing
@ahacksaw @cbatte Mourning doves are one of my favorites, too! Not only do they sound beautiful, but they clean up the mess left by all the other birds that fight over the feeders!
You looking at me!
@mycya4me
@ircon96 I tried to upload one of my Bird pics, BUT it did NOT upload, & only left the title!
@ircon96 I took it at a great bird park “Sylvan Heights Bird Park” in Scotland Neck, NC.
https://www.shwpark.com
@mycya4me Aww, he’s adorable, is that a blue crane? That place looks great, i want to go to there. I posted the owl cuz i thought you were quoting the America’s Best mascot from one of their ads.
@ircon96 @mycya4me That really is a spectacular photo!
@ircon96 @Kyeh Thank You!, The photo group I shoot with, Well lets say they push you to be better. Yes we kid each other about the camera they shoot with. (Richmond Photo Meetup Group- RPMG) we have a Facebook page too, the Meetup page is paid. But you get so much back. Also My user name is the same for Instagram. I will be uploading some more stuff soon!
The goldfinch is my personal favorite (and they stay in MN year round).
That fucking mockingbird that doesn’t shut up all day long. No wonder the girls avoid him and he can’t find a wife.
Scarlet Ibis. After a rainstorm, you’ll see a big flock of them pecking around the yard for worms. Fun to watch.
/image red beak ibis
There currently is a robin nest with babies 5ft from the window next to my work desk at home.
@fibrs86 Whoa! You’re so lucky - what a perfect view!
and a hawk that hangs out in front of the building
@fibrs86 Uh-oh, need better leave those robins alone!
Lol… I’m jealous, tho, cuz my robins insist on building their nests up in the rafters where i can’t see them. Next, they’re probably going to get a restraining order. 
Oops, that should say “he’d better…”
We’ve got a pileated woodpecker that loves the utility pole in the back yard. When we hung up a suet feeder recently he immediately went for it, but I haven’t seen him at it lately.
There a family (families?) of quail that have been around for decades. It’s fun to watch them grow up.
Just one or two humming birds, rather plain colors.
A pair of doves.
Loads of little sparrows and such. We don’t seem to attract many robins. But we do attract some stray cats, never seen them get lucky though.
@blaineg I have at least one woodpecker that loves the corners of my roof, the part that just happens to cover the section of the house where i spend most of my time. I had to hang mylar ribbon to save what’s left of my sanity. It seems to work really well, apparently anything shiny that blows in the wind freaks them out. I’m just glad the solution was something cheap! (Or, should i say “cheep”? Ok, I’ll see myself out…)
@blaineg @ircon96 Once I was hiking in the forest land behind my place. There is a main electric distribution line that runs through it, with four main lines attached to big metal towers. As I walked by a tower, I heard a loud metallic groaning sound and my first panicked thought was “Oh crap - the tower is collapsing!” Then on closer inspection I realized the sound was a woodpecker pecking on one of the struts of the tower. It was incredibly loud and resonant.
Stupid bird.
@blaineg @ircon96 @macromeh
Or smart - he found himself an amplifier!
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh Yes! I found out they also love metal when one started drumming on a vent cap on the other side of my roof. It freaked me out at first, i thought my water heater was about to explode or something! That’s how loud it sounded in the house. Luckily, he decided to move on before too long, cuz I’m not quite sure how i would have deterred him from that particular spot!
@blaineg @ircon96 @Kyeh @macromeh I can relate. My house has a floating steel roof. About five or so years ago, a pileated woodpecker seemed fixated on the roof and kept testing out spots to do some drumming. It was irritating, but he finally found a spot on an edge that made a big chunk of the roof vibrate and make a hideous creaking noise. Either it worked to impress a mate, or the sound scared even him, because he stopped after that.
One year I also had a pileated woodpecker that found a way to drink from a hummingbird feeder. The first time I saw him was early before my morning coffee. My first fuzzy thought was that there was a tabby cat hanging from the feeder, and wondering how it got there. Since the openings were too small, he would just hang from the feeder, grab a port bee guard and “flower” and toss them away. I finally solved that by switching to feeders with slit openings with no detachable covers, then raising the feeder up under a plastic cone.
@blaineg @ircon96 @macromeh @rockblossom–for some reason I was under the impression that you were in CA but from your local birds I realize you must not be.
I’ve never seen a pileated woodpecker - they look huge in the pictures online!
We just get little guys around here. Although we also have flickers; they drum on the house sometimes.
@Kyeh Pileateds are slightly smaller than a domestic crow, so pretty big.
I’m in the Arkansas Ozarks, where it’s either Tick Season or Ice Storm Season. Last week they overlapped, and I now have a new task on my list of things to do: replace two window screens that got shredded by hail. I just hope the killer hail managed to take out a few ticks.
@rockblossom
.
Oh, no! We’ve had unnaturally rainy stormy weather in CO so lots of ticks and mosquitoes
Hail, not too large in my neighborhood, but up to softball sized farther east. The poor concert audience at Red Rocks got pelted with heavy hail Wednesday night.
And they actually had a tornado in a town near Denver on Thursday!
Omg, how did i forget the loons?? They’re a pretty big deal around these parts.
https://loon.org/looncam/
I’m surprised that this has been up for a day and a half and no one has said: “Chickens and turkeys, on the backyard grill.” - or some equivalent.
I have backyard turkeys but they are feathered and mobile. They can be irritatingly loud, but not as annoying as the brown thrashers that land on my bedroom windowsill before dawn and announce themselves. Loudly.
@rockblossom It’s certainly eloquent! Reminds me of a meadowlark, kind of.
@Kyeh Mockingbirds, catbirds, and thrashers are all in the family Mimidae. Thrashers are dressed in country brown while the other two sport more formal grays. All of the bird books say thrashers are “hard to spot” - which isn’t true when there are a dozen wandering around my yard. They are also described as “exuberant singers” - which I heartily agree with, if “exuberant” means both non-stop and loud. And they live here year-round.
@Kyeh @rockblossom
The real meadowlark
/image Meadowlark Lemon
@rockblossom @ybmuG
I’d much rather listen to this one sing:
To me that song is the pure distilled essence of my childhood summers.
@Kyeh @rockblossom very cool. For me this is summer
https://youtube.com/shorts/evCMpioZRrc?feature=share3
@rockblossom @ybmuG Oh, I love them too!
@Kyeh @rockblossom @ybmuG Hey! I recognize that call (of the blackbird) - I guess I just didn’t realize what kind of bird makes it.
Northern Cardinal. With its brilliant red plumage and stylish crest, it’s truly a sight to behold1
The robin and her nest that was over the front door each year. Watching the robin family and babies was fun even if we occasionally got dive bombed.
A park across the street from my former work office is apparently a favorite stop for migrating Canadian geese. As you might imagine, you have to keep an eye to the sky when walking around the park, lest you get bombed.
@macromeh
That’s a LOT OF GEESE!
@Kyeh Yes, yes it is. And I probably don’t need to tell you what accompanies a lot of geese…
@macromeh
The Hadada ibis was constant when I was in South Africa and Zimbabwe. There’s lots of them, and they are loud.
Not technically a bird, and they don’t have calls (at least that we can hear) but I do like these guys
From our back yard tonight
Here’s a nice site for researching birds.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/
I left my door open just now while I was cleaning my hummingbird feeder. Came back inside to find a catbird sitting on my kitchen floor. We looked at each other and he flew outside.
Anyway we have lots of catbirds and they like my feeders. So I like them. Plus they meow.
@sammydog01 You should hear what grackles can do. The ones around the University of Houston parking lots can imitate car alarms faithfully. It’s slightly unnerving to hear one gong off in the top of a tree.