Birds you saw today

[Gopher Gary]

Sugarbutt says every bird in the countryside loves the new suet cage, except for the woodpeckers. They're still eating nothing and merrily scattering tons of seed on the ground.    Here's a picture, since people are posting pictures. We occasionally have the really big pileated woodpeckers in the trees but they never come down and visit the feeders. It's the smaller red belly woodpeckers who are wasting all the bird seed. 

[Fun With Matches]

^ That one is pretty. They all are, just that one particularly stands out at the moment.

[lutra]

Gulls. (Laridae)

Some call them sea gulls but that's not really correct. Well, I hardly know the difference between the species and their diff. names myself.. but this (big) fellow I quite often see around here.
Herring gull (Larus argentatus).


Think we all know (well, maybe if you don't live near (-ish) the coast you don't) the laughing noise they make. They have a whole array of noises, all quite loud, some quite funny, imo.

There are a few other species of gull at my whereabouts butz..

Although I haven't heard or seen this small bird for a couple of months now.. it is around.. surely in Winter. The Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes). Um, was about to write it's one of smallish birds we have here but that's not true.


His song is remarkably loud (for a tiny bird) and is really nice. Ffff, how to describe it's sound. If wished you could play it's song on the (Eng.) wikipedia page about the (marsh) wren.
The Americas, Australia and New Zealand has some pretty beautiful species as well. Often two tads bigger though. They all do the tail up pose thing also.

["couldbecousin"]

  Spotted a red-tailed hawk gliding in the sky yesterday. 
  They always make me think of my father, 
  who taught me to recognize their silhouettes and the gliding. 
  This is a red-tailed hawk:

[lutra]

^ Nice. Me likey birds of prey. Haven't seen one in quite a while I'm afraid. Once in a while I hear one in a park nearby. 'Keek, keek, keek, keek, etc.' (or something like that). Think it's a goshawk.

(Accipiter gentilis)

[Phoenix]

I've loved birds of prey for my entire life. One of my earliest obsessions. Today I saw a peregrine falcon. We have a lot of them out here.

[Gopher Gary]

There's a really tall dead tree in the woods behind the nextdoor neighbor's house, and the hawks like to hang up there. I guess it's a good vantage point. Sometimes we get big owls that make me nervous about the dog, but I don't mind the hawks around. The only time they bothered me was the spring before last when they decided to nest in the big oak, so every morning I was woke up by the horrible sound of their offspring screeching their heads off. I don't know if there's anything more disturbing than the sound of about half dozen young hawks screaming to be fed. 

[renaeden]

My mum posted this link on Facebook. I knew ravens/crows were clever, but not how clever. In the link there's a video about the ravens.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2017/07/25/ravens-are-more-cunning-than-human-preschoolers/#adcc4d95d6f0

[Grey Area]

Some say the magpie's shape (nowadays) looks like the shape the first birds had. Those birds evolved from lizards, were quite big and flew around millions of years before human bs 'arrived' on this planet.

They look like dinosaurs, because they are dinosaurs.



This is a reconstruction of a velociraptor based on current scientific understanding.

[lutra]

Thanks for the link there. Interesting read. Modern-day dinosaurs thus, okay, but it's hard for me to see nowadays birds as mighty/monstrous/fearful lizards. Well..

[Phoenix]

Saw one of these fellas fly over my house this morning. It's a Great Blue Heron. They're one of my favourite birds. They like to frequent marshes and lakes which we have several of in the area.

[lutra]

No Great Blue Heron here.. but we do have a few different herons in Holland. The Grey Heron is the most common. They look quite similar, I'd say..


Often I see the big bird fly by when I look West (out of windows/or in the garden) and then the bird flies towards water in the morning and back home in the evening. Always seemingly so relaxed and not in a hurry at all.

Well, two hours ago I saw a Blue Tit.. and they are almost the opposite of relaxed, I'd say. They move every second and do not sit still whilst awake.. like ever. Hush, really high heartbeat frequency, hush.... and off again. 

(Parus caeruleus)

Little fella hang upside down on the lowest part of this place's cladding, looking swiftly for tiny insects there, and went away again..

[Phoenix]

They are extremely similar!!! You're right, they never seem to be in a rush about anything. I like it when I catch them asleep, standing in the water on one leg like flamingoes 

['andersom']

The name of the grey heron is "blauwe reiger" (blue heron) in Dutch.

So couple of posts ago I made a mistake, when telling there was a couple of blue ones.

['andersom']

Saw quite a few storks in the weekend. When I was a small calf they were nearly extinct. Not any more.
Saw no white herons, odd.