Birds are dumb and annoying

[plugboots]

I like the hummingbird's tongue dangling out.

[Buster Highmen]

I like birds.

From the Barred Owls that keep asking about cooking, to the Pileateds mad laughter to the myriad finches that extoll the virtues of life and the sad hots of the mourning doves.
The owls like the rabbits.

The Pileateds like the grubs in the dead alder snags.

The finches like 6 kinds of wild berries: wild currants, cascade trailing blackberries, buttonberries, salmon berries, black caps and the elderberries

But the mourning doves love the elderberries and disappear after they're dried up.

[GeezerSteve]

Buster, I'd lay odds Cedar Waxwings are eating some of those berries

[lifelinksplit]

Bout a month ago camping out on cliff lake in Montana I rowed my boat up an inlet. Hear a bunch of ruckus and look over to see a huge baldy crash on the ground between two trees. Pops up with something and see a mother fox jumping and biting at the eagle. Eagle lands like 15 ft from den and chokes kills the kit while mom watches, not knowing to fuck with eagle or guard den. Then eagle flies away like a fucking boss with baby fox right over me. Couple hours earlier an eagle swooped a osprey and straight up jacked his fish. But yeah tweety birds and flying rats suck

[tripice351]

Eagles are fucking ruthless

Edit: gate you, tapatalk.
Google "eagle kills goat" for some gangster shit on youtube

[Mazderati]

These vids are rough but the commentary on this one is pretty good.

[iceman]

^^^great stuff thanks. I'd hang with that guy in a minute.

[Norseman]

Bout a month ago camping out on cliff lake in Montana I rowed my boat up an inlet. Hear a bunch of ruckus and look over to see a huge baldy crash on the ground between two trees. Pops up with something and see a mother fox jumping and biting at the eagle. Eagle lands like 15 ft from den and chokes kills the kit while mom watches, not knowing to fuck with eagle or guard den. Then eagle flies away like a fucking boss with baby fox right over me. Couple hours earlier an eagle swooped a osprey and straight up jacked his fish. But yeah tweety birds and flying rats suck

Nice, good eagle story. Boss ass birds.


I was walking out to my car after work a couple years ago when I heard a big group of seagulls screeching and freaking out, out of view behind the building. A second later, a baldy came hauling ass overhead with a dead adult gull, bloody and limp with its head swinging around. The group chased it out over the water, then gave up and dispersed as the eagle continued out to the trees. Would have been cool to witness the attack.

Seen a few Ospreys bomb into the water and come up with fish. So cool how they hold fish aerodynamically, head into the wind.

My old man once saw a red-tailed hawk become fed up with a pestering smaller bird. As the little guy swooped from above to harass, the hawk inverted and grabbed it with its talons, smoothly continued the roll and threw the instantly-dead bird to the ground, then kept soaring on its way.

A family friend lost an eye to a small raptor, I think a Cooper's hawk. He was studying their nesting behavior and somehow pissed it off.

Raptors are fucking cool.

Never knew mantises would attack hummingbirds... burly.

[BmillsSkier]

Didn't Jer have an epic owls thread going in polyass?

The owls have been very active around me lately. Been hearing lots of kills at night out back. Then a bunch of "who cooks for you!?!" owl talk.

Owls to me are better than birbs.

[Kopi_Red]

We have a lot of chicken hawks around where I live as well as a few bald eagles, a couple of falcons and even a vulture or two. When I'm doing field work it's always fun to watch the raptors swoop down and pick off their prey.

Last year I was out in a field very early in the season and I must have been the only farmer around working his ground because I counted 26 chicken hawks in the field with me. They come to the fields that are getting tilled because all of the action/dirt-work scares the mice so then the birds have a feeding frenzy.

Another time during harvest I spotted a cottontail scurrying for its life across the field and then I spotted the hawk just as it swooped down upon the wascally wabbit. The bird clipped the bunny but the rabbit ended up getting away from it. Then out of nowhere another hawk dives down on the rabbit as it was making its escape and again it somehow narrowly avoided death. At this point I've become a fan of Peter Rabbit and I'm cheering his great escape but then I spotted it. A third hawk was above him and it didn't look promising for the hare. The new challenger looked like he meant business. He dove down on the coney and sealed its fate. The third bird succeeded where his compatriots had not and alas Bugs Bunny was no more.

[GeezerSteve]

Yo boys, if you're gonna tell eagle stories, be specific about the species: Bald Eagle or Golden Eagle. Bald Eagles are far more abundant in the Western U.S. Golden Eagles are far more rare in the Western U.S. The two species are not closely related. For me, a Baldie sighting is ho hum, a near daily experience. But a Golden Eagle sighting is an event. I see hundreds of Baldies each year. I am lucky to see a half dozen Golden Eagles each year (and, as a birder, I'm always looking).

Kopi, chicken hawk? WTF? Those are mostly Red-tailed Hawks in your area. In winter the Rough-legged Hawks work down from the arctic and sub-arctic to our area. There are some other buteos in the area, the sum of which is greatly outnumbered by Red-tailed Hawks.

The most common falcon in the PNW is the American Kestrel, a small (robin-size) falcon which likes to eat grasshoppers and often perch on utility wires. Easy ID because of distinctive field marks on head. We have Prairie Falcons E of the crest. Merlins are spread throughout WA, although not always easy to ID. Peregrines are rare but making a comeback (e.g., Peregrine nests on Seattle skyscraper roofs).

Cooper's Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk are the most common PNW accipiter species. Accipter females are quite a bit larger than the males. The ability to distinguish a smaller (male) Coops from a larger (female) Sharpie requires experience and is one hallmark of a birder with chops. Northern Goshawks are in the PNW, mostly at or E of the Cascade Crest, not often seen and a true delight to see. In 2016 I made 5 Goshawk confident IDs, a record for me.

[BmillsSkier]

Steve, I can appreciate your passion for something I know next to nothing about. I gotta ask, you probably liked that movie The Big Year, right?

I thought hey, it's a movie about birding but it's got Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson it's gotta be good!

Yeah, no.

[GeezerSteve]

I gotta ask, you probably liked that movie The Big Year, right?

I enjoyed the movie but the book upon which it was based, The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession, is much much better.

Passion? Hmmmmmm. I've never thought of birding as a passion. It's just part of my life. A birder always has his eyes on. Unlike athletic pursuits, one actually gets better at birding year-after-year after age 50+. My wife is becoming a birder. She's can visually gestalt ID 50+ species immediately on sight but may lack the patience to bump up to the next step (voice ID, empidonax flycatchers, etc.). She relies on me for that.

I've been a birder for 40 years. I started birding while in college. One of my bicycle touring buds was from a birder family. He got us into it. We would try to ID all the species we saw on our trans-USA trips, always getting 100+ on a coast-to-coast trip. Bicycling and birding go together.

I bumped up to Advanced Hack Birder status about 10 years ago, although it seems that I am treated as a quasi-authority when I do the monthly bird walks with the local Audubon Society chapter. I've worked hard on voice ID and can ID a bunch of species by ear, but my eyes are still better than my ear. (I now have only one inner ear.)

DD is full of shit. Life without birding would be a lesser life. It's never too late to start birding.

[Mazderati]

Birdspotting. It's like trainspotting except heron instead of heroin.

[GeezerSteve]

Birdspotting. It's like trainspotting except heron instead of heroin.

Someday you'll egret uttering that pun

[My Pet Powder Goat]

Someday you'll egret uddering that pun

FIFY
Might as well go for broke

[BmillsSkier]

Birdspotting. It's like trainspotting except heron instead of heroin.

Yeah, golf clap.

[goldengatestinx]

Yo boys, if you're gonna tell eagle stories, be specific about the species: Bald Eagle or Golden Eagle. Bald Eagles are far more abundant in the Western U.S. Golden Eagles are far more rare in the Western U.S. The two species are not closely related. For me, a Baldie sighting is ho hum, a near daily experience. But a Golden Eagle sighting is an event. I see hundreds of Baldies each year. I am lucky to see a half dozen Golden Eagles each year (and, as a birder, I'm always looking).

Kopi, chicken hawk? WTF? Those are mostly Red-tailed Hawks in your area. In winter the Rough-legged Hawks work down from the arctic and sub-arctic to our area. There are some other buteos in the area, the sum of which is greatly outnumbered by Red-tailed Hawks.

The most common falcon in the PNW is the American Kestrel, a small (robin-size) falcon which likes to eat grasshoppers and often perch on utility wires. Easy ID because of distinctive field marks on head. We have Prairie Falcons E of the crest. Merlins are spread throughout WA, although not always easy to ID. Peregrines are rare but making a comeback (e.g., Peregrine nests on Seattle skyscraper roofs).

Cooper's Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk are the most common PNW accipiter species. Accipter females are quite a bit larger than the males. The ability to distinguish a smaller (male) Coops from a larger (female) Sharpie requires experience and is one hallmark of a birder with chops. Northern Goshawks are in the PNW, mostly at or E of the Cascade Crest, not often seen and a true delight to see. In 2016 I made 5 Goshawk confident IDs, a record for me.

Fog Horn Leg Horn beware of the chicken hawk!

[digitaldeath]

Be funny if when Steve is out birding, glassing hard, he gets a lens full of some guy scratching his nuts while birding too

[GeezerSteve]

FIFY

Those are Cattle Egrets, an invasive species in NA. Not good. AFAIC you can kill 'em, along with the European Starling, House Sparrow and Eurasian Collared Doves

Be funny if when Steve is out birding, glassing hard, he gets a lens full of some guy scratching his nuts while birding too

That's your sick fantasy bro, not mine. I did see a glass a naked chick while birding a few years ago. She waved at me then got back into her car.

[digitaldeath]

[irul&ublo]

Yeah, golf clap.

Is that what Tiger gave to the Perko's waitress?

[2bjenny]

Kestrels nested in my backyard this year. They are very loud. When I am out in the yard working, I can see the chicks practicing their flying skills from tree to tree now that they have fledged.

We have Goldens out here occasionally, usually in the winter and spring. I am always amazed at their size. I took a group of students out in April to watch the Sage Grouse dance at their lek. Just as one of the students was asking me how long the males would dance, a Golden Eagle swooped in looking for a meal. I told him I guess until the eagle shows up. It was a pretty amazing sight.

[digitaldeath]

for the birds

[BmillsSkier]

Is that what Tiger gave to the Perko's waitress?

Finally! Someone has the decency to remember that it was Perkins and not Denny's. For fucks sake though, it was a hostess.

Totally different animal.

I believe they even may be immune to the golf clap.