JCC Birding Thread

And here I thought someone else had nailed the 2016 meltdown early on in the game. But silly me, it is so early yet.

 

Are wocky and neckbeard flirting?

 

I wish to feast upon these birds.

 

Crows used to dip down into our garden and find the baby bunnies, then fly up to our garage roof and rip them into tasty little shreds. It was a sight that horrified my oldest kid. But then West Nile came through Chicago like the birdpocalypse and completely wiped out the crow/blackbird population. To this day, I never see any around. That summer we'd find them dead in the alley or on the sidewalk. A bird plague to end all bird plagues.

Now we have urban hawks that have filled at least part of the eating baby bunny niche.

 

Went for a day at the beach at a local (45 minute drive) regional park yesterday. Amongst others, saw native Wood Pigeons doing swoop/stall dives (these are big, beautiful, 60cm long, fruit eating forest dwellers, not the urban rats you normally think of), plus an Oystercatcher pair with juvenile, and a NZ Dotterel with 2 chicks. It might interest you Boba Nekhbet that this is the same dotterel species that landed Taylor Swift's video crew in trouble at my local beach not so long ago.

 

From Yellowstone:




From my Zoo intern days

 

Went for a walk with the family around an inner city lake today (Western Springs, Auckland).





Pied Shag.



Paradise Duck (Female, males are all black)


Pukeko



Male NZ Scaup.



Female NZ Scaup & chicks.

 

i had bird babies once. but then their father got eaten by a bigger bird and their mother couldn't feed them alone and they all starved to death.

 

I haven't really gotten into birding formally, but my mom was a casual observer. I have fond memories of sitting at our dining room table as a kid, as my mom pointed out all the different species that came to the feeders in our backyard.

I do like birds quite a bit though! And whenever I see a rare or interesting one I'm always excited. There's this great big arboretum by my university's campus, and its home to a bunch of Peliated Woodpeckers, which are pretty awesome (not my picture by the way):



Also, I was hiking around in the arboretum and I happened upon this guy (the camera I had at the time sucked but I snapped a semi-decent one):



Very cool-looking (and big!) Barred Owl!