Eastern Spinebill.
One of our most plain-colored but otherwise lovely nectar feeding birds.
OK, so I’m a bit early this week. Luna and I visit a nursing home on Thursday, and since we’re down Hobart way, we also run errands and go for a walk at the Montrose Forshore park (a designated dog park). Hence the recent spate of late postings. So today (Wednesday evening) I thought I’d get a jump on things.
Cool bird shots, keres.
Our birds our more mundane but they’ve apparently been feeling rather communal these days. Usually bluejays are really solitary — but this year we’ve had 5 or 6 at a time which made it pretty easy to get a picture of the usually flighty birds.
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And I was absolutely amazed to get this shot of four goldfinches sharing the feeder rather than attacking each other over it.
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Lovely Blue Jay and Gold Finches. I’m not sure I’ve seen either in the wild.
What you wrote makes me think about hummingbirds – their tendency is to squabble, but occasionally you’d get a whole slew of them at the feeder all at once.
Well you’ve certainly been compensated for missing those two in the wild with the amazing variety of very gorgeous birds you get to see all around you.
I’m certainly not complaining. I love the critters here. I’m very fortunate that I get to enjoy two antipodally different biota communities all in one lifetime.
we’ve got 2 blue jays that come every day that we feed peanuts to. I’ll put the peanuts out, one will come sit on the wire and caw till the other one shows up, then they take turns gobbling up the nuts till they’re gone. cute!
Most our bird don’t seem to be pals about sharing, except for the woodpeckers (especially the downies) which do seems to do that with the suet feeder.
We had lots of Downies in northern California. Since I lived in the middle of an oak grove, they were the summer morning wake-up crew. We also had lots of Ladder-backed woodpeckers. During acorn season everyday was accompanied by a full percussion ensemble.
And, because of the acorns, we had about 50+ wild turkeys on the far side of the property. They’re funny birds – we’d occasionally surprise a group and they’d run around in a panic before remembering that they could fly.
Huh, our wild turkeys always take off right away when they’re startled. A lot of times we have no idea they are around and we get just as startled back by the huge crashing sound (they are just too big for a woods as dense as around here; there’s no way they can avoid hitting tree branches).
I was a bit surprised too. I’d always heard about how intelligent and crafty wild turkeys are compared to their dim witted domestic cousins. I suspect the west coast turkeys, who were introduced there as a game species, suffered from “founders effect”, i.e. the ones that got moved from the east to California were the one’s stupid enough to get caught.
And I should probably add that they we primarily saw the bachelor groups. The females with broods were much more circumspect.
We’ve had females with chicks do the faking an injury to lead us away from them gimmick. Fortunately, it’s never necessary because the dogs are completely uninterested in birds.
Fortunately, it’s never necessary because the dogs are completely uninterested in birds.
Lucky you. We’re usually first alerted to Luna’s escape by the sound of our ducks scattering. Nor does she limit herself to birds. Anything flying is fascinating and moths in particular seem to be her favorite.
These Swift moths (Oxycanus antipoda) were all over the windows tonight and Luna was trying to catch them.
Oh, and speaking of baby birds, I saw a pair of Black swans last week with some late season cygnets. One grey puff-ball was swimming behind and the other sitting on momma’s back. Very cute.
That’s a moth? It looks like a hamster.
Yes, they are very woolly. This one got in the house when I was trying to get Luna to come in to stop the potential moth carnage outside.
Most of our big moths spend the year underground as grubs feeding on tree roots. They only pupate and emerge as imagoes (an insect in its final, adult, sexually mature, and typically winged state) in order to breed (much like cicadas). Since they only live a few weeks, timing is crucial and the tend to emerge en masse (also like cicadas).
I caught a Pindi moth last week who was about twice as big as the Swift moth.
One of Albert’s more endearing traits (and let’s face it, everything he does is cute) is list to one side when he’s asleep.
Sometimes he falls over completely and wakes himself up.
From Albert’s perspective he does seem to be leaning left.
It’s a left-leaning household, so he fits right in.
Luna is still a great big pest, as far as Albert’s concerned.
But now she’s a pest with a modicum of self-control – which I believe he enjoys putting to the test.