Bald Eagle!

So today I chanced to look out the bathroom window and I see four birds alighting on one of the afore-mentioned "mountains" about thirty feet out, the bumpy edge where the frozen-over shallows meet the bay.  Four dark birds...crows, no doubt...but wait, one of them is quite a bit larger than the others.  And as they are landing, I see he has a white tail.  Hello, no crow has a white tail!

I run to get the binoculars and look through the window breathlessly, and there he is: a bald eagle! He's got something in his talons.  I run to get the camera and try to focus it through the window.  Ack, it's on movie setting!  Change to scenery, take a picture, back to the binoculars.  Three crows waiting on the sidelines and one big eagle, eating something.

Suddenly he spreads his wings and flies away.  I can see better now what he's got in his talons:  the partially-eaten remains of a fish.  He flies away gracefully down the coast.  I run to the other part of the house and try to find him again with the binoculars, but he is gone.

Okay, so now I want to check the books.  Was it really a bald eagle?  His head was not pristinely white like in the picture...he looked like he was dirty.  Well heck, he'd been fishing.  Did he have a yellow beak?  I can't remember.  I look at other hawk-like birds.  Could it have been an osprey?  They eat fish! But his head was white...dirty white, but not with that black mark.  Plus, according to Sibley, ospreys are around here in the summer, not the winter.  Confirmed by Birds of Michigan.  Plus, they don't have a white tail.

Time to upload the picture.  Perhaps this will end the debate!  Unfortunately, we must return to an earlier theme of this blog:  I need a better camera.  (No offense, trusty Lumix.)  Here it is, for what it's worth:

I wish I could zoom in further, but the resolution just disintegrates.

Diagnosis, anyone?

Cold and Windy

Also snowy.  The waves in the bay are no longer breaking on the shore, but about a hundred feet out, as the shallower parts of the bay have frozen over.  A mountain range of icy peaks is developing out there along the edge, as the water crashes into the ice and sprays droplets down...kind of like those drip sand castles I used to make on the beach as a kid.

Two blue jays were at the feeder today, and then a tiny chickadee, so small by comparison!  The male cardinal also made an appearance, as well as the white-breasted nuthatch and the red-bellied woodpecker.

I've started to wonder just what is in that feeder hanging out there, after reading the letter to the editor in which the writer detailed this, that, and the other bird food.  I'm thinking perhaps if we expanded our feeders past one to include some suet and sunflower seeds, we might attract some new birds.

Stay tuned...

The Return of the Red-Bellied Woodpecker

This morning the red-bellied woodpecker returned to the feeder, no doubt on account of my birthday, which is today.  He is so big he has to kind of hang underneath and peck at the seeds.  The minute I opened the door to take a picture, he flew away, but here he is in the tree:

A fine fellow!

It's snowing today, and this seems to bring out the mallards...or more likely, I just chanced to see their large group floating by today:

Some of the mallards

I do remember when we had that blizzard and there were gulls and ducks all over the place...I suppose it depends on the food, which perhaps is more abundant during a storm.  It's not very stormy now, however...just snowing steadily.

Mark and I had a discussion the other day about ducks' feet and how they stay warm.  He said their veins are wrapped around the artery that goes down each leg, thus providing a heat exchange that keeps their feet from freezing.  Interesting!

The main visitors of late to the feeder are the chickadees.  They seem to be getting plumper and plumper...little round balls, they are, especially when grooming.  The female cardinal was also there a bunch this morning:

Here she is with the mallards:

Haven't seen the titmice lately, nor the blue jay.  I know we have a pileated woodpecker around here, too, but I've never seen him.  

Well, I'll be darned: cue the blue jay.  He just came to the feeder.

If one waits long enough...

Here's a tip, this one from my friend Kimberli: when you see a bird with your naked eye that you then want to observe with binoculars, don't look down at the binoculars and then try to find the bird.  Keep looking at the bird, and bring the binoculars up to your eyes.  Voila!  This is a very good tip.

I'm going snowshoeing today with some friends, and will have binoculars in hand.  Maybe some new birds (or old friends) will grace me with their presence!  Wish me luck.

Yesterday

Well, a few days ago really, the feeder fell empty, and the task of filling it fell to someone tall, i.e. Mark.  Here he is filling the feeder:

Some people are nuts.

Then yesterday, the following letter appeared in our local paper:

Hmm, being a new bird watcher, I really had no perspective to offer to the discussion.  But I asked Mark about it, and he said we normally have one family of chickadees, some titmice, cardinals, and the occasional blue jay...in other words, about what we have now.

My friend Bill, though, said he also had noticed a reduction in the number of birds.

Hmm.  ??

As if to prove her point, looking around yesterday, I could not find a single bird.  Well, at least at that exact instant.  :-)

Where are all the birds, indeed?

The Cardinal's Mate!

This morning I got up earlier, and was rewarded with a lot more bird activity.  The ducks were back en force...lots of mallards, moving slowly along the bay.  One herring gull flew by!  A blue jay appeared at the feeder, along with two tufted titmice and our friend the chickadee...who was suddenly replaced at the feeder by another chickadee!  First time I'd seen that.

They took turns for awhile, and I was looking at the bush with my binoculars trying to locate the other chickadee when suddenly I saw this:

What's this, a reddish tail??  Must be a cardinal, but too brown of a body to be the male.  Must be the cardinal's mate!

I looked around for the male, and found him in a tree nearby:

He's a little harder to spot, but obliged me later by coming to the feeder.

Look at the nuthatch, peeking out from the trunk of the tree!  Waiting patiently, as usual.  He's an interesting guy...spent a long time just parked on the tree, facing downward with his neck craned up...he must have better neck muscles than me.

Also spotted today were a few mergansers and one swan.

Here's the cardinal's mate, in a rare glimmer of sunshine:

Back to Michigan

Snow, snow, and more snow.  That pretty much sums up the environment out here at present.  My return to Michigan with my new binoculars has not revealed any new species (now that I am officially allowed to use my new bird books, post-Christmas) but I have enjoyed watching some ones that I know.  Yesterday a lone mute swan hung out for awhile in the bay...see if you can tell which white blob is the swan.

Here is another picture of him, right-side up:

Which brings me to another point: now I need a better camera.  My Lumix can only go so far!  Hmm, this bird-watching is turning into a real money-pit...where will it all end?  After the camera, I will then need to travel to all ends of the Earth in search of more birds.

Well, that sounds pretty good!

Also sited recently have been eight mallards, three tufted titmice (titmice? titmouses?), a black-capped chickadee, blue jay, and very briefly, the lovely male cardinal.  Gone completely are the gulls...or maybe I am not getting up early enough.  I am back to my night-owl habits of late, so I'm no doubt missing the most bird-active part of the day.

I'll leave you with the lovely titmouse in the bush near the feeder:

Happy new year of bird-watching!

More Birds of Oregon

Here are the main birds I saw in Oregon, aside from the House Sparrows (thanks for the ID, Randy!).  These are a few of my sister's hens, happily pecking away in the chicken coop.  Among them are Black Sex-Links and Rhodesian Reds (I can't remember the name of the white one).  Sex-Links are so-named because they can be sexed upon hatching; usually by color, but sometimes by feather development.  They are a cross between two types of chickens and are hardier and more productive than their parents' respective breeds.

All of Jill's hens are thriving and lay lovely eggs of green, brown, and white...Jill knows which came from which.  The yolks are much yellower and plumper than those of store-bought, factory-farmed eggs.  There really is nothing like eating eggs straight from the chicken's butt!  To say nothing of avoiding participating in the misery that hens in factory farms endure (stuffed into battery cages in a dark building with their beaks cut off so that they don't peck each other out of extreme boredom and frustration)...by contrast, Jill's hens can choose to stay in the coop with the heat lamp, peck out in the yard, or venture into the scrub brush, looking for bugs and worms.

This is awful.

So my message to eaters of eggs of chickens...don't buy those little orbs of misery...find an egg supplier that treats the hens well.  We have to treat all of our fellow bird-creatures right!