Birds!

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I'm visually impaired so birds are hard to see unless they're up close. I like parrots, owls, and peacocks especially.

I get Red Kites occasionally circling while Dog V4 chases his ball. On far too rare occasions there are owls too.

Dog V4 keeps the pigeons off the cherry tree, he knows when I shout pigeon there is excitement to be had.

Florida Scrub Jay.

Sandhill Cranes

I like green feathered birds the best.

We spent the afternoon paddling on Fisheating Creek. This afternoon's bird list:

White Egret
Snowy Egret
Great Blue Heron
Tricolor Heron
Little Blue Heron
Black crowned Night Heron
Anhinga
Cormorant
Black Vulture
White Ibis
Red-shouldered Hawk
American Crow
Carolina Wren

My favourite bird without question is the Eurasian eagle-owl. I love owls, but have never seen any in the wild. Penguins, vultures and eagles are pretty cool too.

I do like watching the birds in my neighbourhood a bit.
There's a lot of jackdaws. A lot. Some days can be a bit noisy. There's also quite a lot of tits and sparrows and the occasional magpie. During the winter there's a lot of black-headed gulls about as well.

When I go to work I ride through a small park. I often see crows, ducks and what I think are moorhens. Sometimes there's a great big heron there as well. One almost flew into me once. I think I may have seen a woodpecker there once.

UK posters , bird spotters, get in here, this thread is a golden opportunity. I shall go first.

I spotted the largest pair of tits the other day. They was quite fat and round. These birds can be seen in groups often looking for a place to grab a fee meal. they are attracted to fancy bird houses that are erected for their benefit. these are safe habitats for birds to feed and breed, a bird's house is very important. she guards her box very jealously, fighting off attempts of penetrating her defenses.

...aaaaaand moving swiftly on. I saw a kingfisher on the lake earlier in the week. It was in view for about 30 seconds, which is unusual- normally I catch a flash of blue and they're gone. This was on a dark, rainy day, so instead of royal blue, it appeared to be a dark metallic blue-grey. The shape is unmistakable, though.

I am very lucky. From time to time a kingfisher will choose our pond to fish in. We can watch him swoop and dive and dine on fishes from our pond.

I regularly see and hear Pileated Woodpeckers and Barred Owls.

Today, I heard an American Goldfinch, but they are difficult to see in their winter plumage.

We do have in our woods Tufted Titmice.

The redwings are back in town with the snow. I also got to watch a treecreeper walking up the trunk of a tall tree in search of insects. They're very small, brown and cream with a slightly down-curved beak. So they don't look that distinctive, it's the tree-creeping behaviour that stands out.

I really, really love American Crows! I live in the SF Bay Area about 1/4-mile from the Hayward Fault, so we have some open space for birds. Up in the hill above us we have many large flocks of Ravens, I won't use a the thoughtless descriptors like "an unkindness of Ravens" or "a murder of Crows" they're horribly ignorant, well maybe if we can start calling them "a plague of humans" Anyway, when my wife and I go walking up there we can always hear these big Corvids honking, tooting and rattling. Did you know that Ravens are the largest "song bird"? Also, Ravens glide, and Crows don't which is how you can tell them apart in flight.

Did you know that birds and insects that are blue don't have a color pigment on those parts, instead, its the way the feathers and scales are constructed that refracts light creating a blue wavelength that we see? I bring this up because we have California Scrub-jays here. We also have Steller's Jays, which are blue and black as opposed to the Scrub-jays Blue and gray: these birds are not Blue Jays though, which are Mid-West and East-Coast birds.

Another very sweet bird we get in our back yard is the California Towhee:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_towhee

DIVAIR

This is the weekend for the Great Backyard Bird Count. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can participate. You count birds for 15 minutes and report via computer or with an app.

My list for 1/2 hour today was:
Blue-gray Gnat-catcher
Tufted titmouse
Blue Jay
Northern Cardinal
White-eyed Vireo
Carolina Wren
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Catbird
American Goldfinch

There is still one more day, tomorrow, Monday, if you want to participate.

Snow geese on the ice! The camouflage is finally working...


Blazingstar - I looked a couple of those up. The vireos are stunning!

DIVAIR - I've never actually seen a raven. That's one bird I'd really like to meet.

I've found a bush which a pair of goldcrests keep visiting for berries. They're tiny- even smaller than wrens apparently, though they look a bit bigger 'cos they keep their feathers puffed up a lot. I've only seen them a couple of times before. They're not rare, but they seem to prefer staying in dense cover. These two get from one part of the bush to another by scrambling through the branches, where other birds would probably just fly around it.