Hello everyone and welcome to the yard.
My feeder brings all the birds to the yard.. .
Brids to the yard..
Kinda reminds me of a song about milkshakes <,<
Over the last few weeks I've been stalking the backyard to see what I have comming in throught the day and make some changes
First off, after having my Humming feeder snubbed for over two weeks I decided to replace it with a seed feeder and the sparrows were on it before I walked away from it..
Next I moved the Hummingbird feeder across the yard to the apple tree
Then a mear 15 minutes laster I here a Hummingbird singing....
I guess location matters... or they don't like the Plum tree for some reason.
Woooo I have a Hummingbird......
Its a little tricky getting a image so far because it will fly into the Apple tree's folage and then swoop down and feed then back up into the Apple tree
I'm still not seeing a lot of birds here the times I was out so I packed a lunch and spent the whole day out there from about 8am to 8pm. I did this for a few days straight and it was edumacational...O.o
I found out part of the problem right off. I was just sitting down when I hear a lot of upset birds fluttering about and then this big Hawk swoops overhead flying about 10' above the house from behind me and there are a swarm of Swallows and Sparrows on it's butttring to rip out a few feathers and by the looks of it they got a couple.
Didn't have a chance in hell of getting my camera up and foucused in time =(
An hour or so later though I was able to capture not one but two, a mated pair I'm guessing
The one pictured above was the one that did the low pass over me being chased by tweety birds lol
As you can see it's missing a feather out of it's wing and one out of it's tail
These Hawks are not yearlong resadents here like a lot of the Red Tail Hawks are and these two are a good bit larger that a Red Tail.
By the size and markings these look to be Northern Goshawks some of the biggest baddest Hawks around here
While some year-round populations of Northern Goshawks are found in the northern region of California, for most of the state only non-breeding hawks are found during the winter, and these birds are only scarce in number. To make locating them even more difficult, Northern Goshawks are secretive in nature and live to stay inside dense, usually coniferous, forests.
Here, they use stealth and high vantage points to ambush prey — mostly medium-sized birds like crows and small mammals. They’re such successful predators, even Attila the Hun had a depiction of a Northern Goshawk on his helmet.
Northern Goshawks are the largest accipiter hawks. They have bulky bodies, long, broad wings for an accipiter, and long tails. Their heads are a dark gay and they have a white stripes that run over their red-orange eyes, giving them the look of having eyebrows. The rest of their plumage is gray above and pale below, with lots of fine, dark gray barring.
I finally got then both in the same frame =)
These two were way far out there so I wasn't able to get a good close up image, I just sprayed n prayed on burst mode and hoped I had something clear enough to blow up a bit.
After the Hawks moved off Some of the local birds started comming back around lol
Then something new flew in....
This is a Starling Jay( Edit - Ooops this is a Steller Jay). I rarly see these birds anymore but they used to be thick here when I was a kid.
This one was with her baby who landed one the ground beyond the corner of the house and when I moved to image it they both took off.
I hope they come back.
Lastly todat the Sparrows have weaned off their young and they are feeding themselves now much to Mom's releif lol
After the 4 kids cleared off Mom came in for a bite to eat...
Looks like Mom got wore the @#$% out this year O.o She looks tired and it looks like the 4 hungry kids have torn all the feathers out of her neck area trying to get the food.
Thats all for now but I have plenty more images from the last few days I still need to download and sort
Next post will be Robins, Ravens, and Crows Raiding the Cherry tree for the now ripe Cherries
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