OK yeah I'm truly a nerd. But I have bird watched since I was a child. Identifying birds and drawing them to your backyard is always so much fun. Anyhow for the first time in my adult life I'm finally not living in a big city in a tiny apartment. Is it weird one of the first things I thought of when getting a house is a bird feeder? So yesterday I researched bird feeders and went out and bought one, seed etc. I hear good things about Brome and I definitely wanted something squirrel proof, but their feeders were pricey. I settled on a lower end model called the Squirrel Buster. It's only a foot long but it does have that spring loaded weight balance so squirrel hopefully will be denied access to the seed. I dug a path in the snow to our only tree in the backyard and set it up, broadcasting some seed around on the snow so hopefully birds get a visual. So far nothing, no squirrels, no birds, nothing at all. Weird. Any fellow bird watchers on here?
Owls are fun, I've seen a few around here. What's cool about bird watching is the variety you get depending where you live. For instance where I grew up in NJ the most exotic I saw were stuff like Evening Grosbeaks, Rufus Sided Towhees. Usually just the common stuff like Goldfinches, House Finches, Cardinals, various blackbirds & sparrows. Here I've seen a ton of Hawks, Bluebirds, Cedar Waxwings, Baltimore Orioles, hummingbirds.
hello, i spotted this great blue heron on my neighbors roof a couple weeks back i always have an eye open to bird watching as well (and nature in general) with spring on its way ive noticed alot of hawks and falcons atop the telephone poles now and when summer comes ill get to see barn owls that live on the ranch where my work is located, i love them im sure once the word is out about free seed, youll be bombarded haha
Takes a bit of time for birds to discover a new seed hotspot. We've been feeding suet and seed all winter, we got a pretty wide variety here in CT. Off the top of my head, we have house sparrows, house finches, some kind of wrens, white-throated sparrows, black + white juncos, gray + white titmice, the nuthatches that look like little penguins, cardinals, annoying-as-fuck squirrels, at least three different kind of woodpeckers, chickadees, blue jays... Would help if I could find my bird book.
Oh yeah I forgot about suet feeders. They're good for woodpeckers, flickers, nuthatches. Might have to get one of those too.
We get some really large woodpeckers occasionally because of the suet feeder, they're spectacular to watch. Only issue I've had with suet feeders is the damn squirrels. We have our box hanging on a long hook attached to a tree branch, and they've figured out how to slide down the hook, balance on top of the box, then flip upside-down to chew through the holes in the box so the suet pieces fall in their mouths. Clever, but infuriating.
Great thread idea. I really miss this about living in the suburbs. It was my favorite thing when I had a house. I used to sit with my coffee in the mornings and watch like it was TV. Now I live in a condo in Philly with no place for one. I'm hoping to find a nice place still in the city with a bit of a backyard where I can set up a bird feeder. At the old house, once my old set up was established a hawk got keen to it and would sit and poach all the little guys. Looked out the back window one day to see the hawk sitting up on a wire above it looking fat, happy and sleepy with a burst of feathers on the ground underneath. That's the circle of life!
I've lived in Philly before (twice actually) definitely not a bird friendly kind of town, unless your an Eagles fan. Only suggestion if you miss bird watching would be to get some African Cichlids and set up a fish tank. It's pretty much aquatic bird watching with those guys (very active).
In the spring I work outside.I keep my binoculars close at hand. There's always some cool bird war action going on. I LOVE watching Hummingbirds "Joust" each other very high up, and chase away crows. We also get Woodpeckers on the telephone poles and palms. Every so often a big Hawk will fly down into the yard. You can feel the wing beats vibrating the air. Then there's the Scrub Jays. SUPER intelligent and always hiding pizza crust in the rain gutters. Best fish ever. So much personality.
My dentist office has cichlids in the waiting room. They are extremely personable. They'd swim right into your lap if they could.
That hummingbird jousting seems like fun to watch. Out west you guys get so many more hummingbirds than we do on the east coast. I did watch a Nature special on it before though (out of this world the aerial acrobatics): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/hummingb ... sode/5475/ Scrub Jays hiding food? So bizarre! And yeah Paul African Cichlids rule! Glad to see another enthusiast! I love em'. It's like one giant community of little territories with the males displaying pretty much every 5 minutes. I could watch them for hours digging away setting up nests.
Yep, I've seen them hiding lots of yummy trash. I need to clean the gutters and find it all. Sometimes I think they forget about it anyway. As a kid we had 3 tanks full of Cichlids. One for each African lake too. Malawai and Tangainika. We had one female,"Goldie" I swear after the first spawn, her mouth was never empty of eggs. We would just give away the babies to the fish store. We had her for the whole span we had tanks, to the point we wouldn't separate her and end up with X5 of her children to full grown after hiding in the rocks and avoiding the rest of the residents. We loved watching her inhale her children. She kicked ass and was the queen for sure. My overall favorites were the 2 Tanganyikan eels we had. They loved to be hand fed, they were like little dogs. Someday. i would love to have a tank again.
If this thread is turning into a fish thread I want to make a case for freshwater rainbow fish, specifically Boeseman's rainbowfish and torquoise rainbows. they are beautiful fish, and don't have the aggressive nature cichlids can have. I've kept rainbows of various types for 6 years or so.
After reading the posts I do like to watch birds. It Oregon there is so many Hummingbirds fighting, and then when they finally get to the feeders the baldface Hornets chase them... Also the lake near me has Ospreys and its so awesome to watch them catch trout. I also love the Pelicans I see in Santa Cruz. Another fun thing to see is the Wild Parrots of Telegraph hill in SF. They made a documentary too - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424565/
I never paid much attention to birds or bird watching. The house I grew up in is next to some really big wall where all sorts of birds nested and would always wake me up in the mornings. I have no idea what kinds of birds they are (I grew up in the desert) However, all that changed when I moved to south korea and not once I heard birds or saw any birds there. They have them, of course, but In my building and in Seoul in general they're hard to hear or see. It's not like the crowing in Japan you hear in the afternoons. When I came back, the first morning I was back home I heard the chirping and never in my life had I been happier to hear birds in the morning. 3 plus years and I had forgotten how it was to hear nature like that. Thanks for the thread and reminding me of this, Lixx.
Never really been a bird watcher, but did you see that weasel catch a ride on that woodpecker? I know so lame of me to comment without a picture, but I'm at work (shhh) here is a link: https://gma.yahoo.com/woodpecker-takes- ... -pets.html
i think overall the patience observing is rewarding to all related nature in this thread. It's good. I agree.Catfish are great. We had one visually vanish from the tank. we thought he was dead for months . until we cleaned the tank, and found he was living in the undergravel filter. (I know the technology is better now!) When we lifted him out in the net, he was croaking like a frog. Loving the poop! We felt like shit. He was in heaven obviously.
Lets just combine the thread, flying fish watching anyone? Seriously here's some pics taken this last week: australian white ibis. Not quite sure what the people living here think of their house becoming a white ibis hangout. I got pretty close to three sitting on the fence before they took off for the roof.
Ahh .. Im on the east coast but was born in Perth! We get plenty on Ibis here too Beautiful bird except when it shits.
We have a flock of parrots most of the year where I work in Austin. they tend to intermix with the grackles. I've never managed to get close enough to get a good picture, but this is a good one off of the web. I wish they dropped more feathers becasue the color is so nice, but maybe they tend to preen elsewhere.
