Let’s Talk Birddos!
I put out my bird feeder today to get the little guys and ladies some extra calories in the hard times. I’m pretty sure every Deadsplinterini is a mammal, but maybe not! And even if none of us is a part of the avian family, we can still appreciate them from afar. Or hate them! Let’s talk birddos! (Just not the stupid kind that Twitter.)
What’s the bird situation where you live? Do you get songbirds? Pigeons? Birds of prey? Shorebirds? Water fowl? Crows?
I have a sister who lives in Chicago, and she reports that more and more she can see huge flocks of sandhill cranes migrating the fall, and it’s an incredible sight.
The closest sight we get to that is flocks of Canada geese migrating back and forth in the fall and spring, and I can’t say it’s all that heart-stirring, but whenever I hear a big bunch of honking I still look up for the big V formation all the same.
We occasionally get mallards dropping in to rest in the calmer parts of the stream behind our house, and from time to time great blue herons will feed on minnows there.
But maybe the coolest birds we get are barred owls which live in our stream valley. You can see them on occasion, but they’re more frequently heard, with the well known call Who hoots for you? Who hoots for yououou?
I love seeing birds in action, even though I can’t really relate to them — there’s a reptillian quality to them I can’t quite shake. When I look at them in the eye, I don’t see the same wavelength I get when I look at a dog or a cat.
But that’s OK. And some people are even creeped out by birds, and don’t want anything to do with them, except eat them in nugget or patty format.
What about you, fellow flock members? Do you have any local favorites? Any that you really like to eat, like Peking duck or smoked turkey? Any that creep you out? Any that always seem to have a special significance for you, like harbingers of spring or the oncoming winter?
The transition period between fall and winter is a great time to start watching them out the winter or on a walk, now that the leaves are gone. What say you?
The 2015 polar vortex brought a Snowy Owl to a utility pole near work. My father is the ornithologist of the family. He used to record all the birds he saw around his bird feeder (with a sling shot handy to shoot at squirrels – we think he’s the one who ‘taught’ all our dogs to hate squirrels.)
When I was kid I was creeped out by by the BBQ’ed Ducks hanging in the windows of the Toronto Chinese restaurants my family would eat at.
Now, I know that is some good eating. Ducks are really tasty, but all them small bones…
Still can’t eat 1000 year old Duck eggs… bleah.
Once a cousin sent us some smoked turkey from Kentucky once. For once my family enjoyed the breast meat.
Yeah, there’s nothing sentimental about those whole ducks. I roasted one once for Christmas and it was good, but they definitely have a ton of fat and bone compared to chickens and turkeys.
i tried putting out a birb feeder for winter….but the crows keep stealing it….they are smart bastards with an emphasis on bastards
i cant put out a properly grounded feeder…coz i have 3 cats…and im not willing to be responsible for that kinda slaughter of wee birds
but the local crows steal everything not nailed down around here….fuckers are strong too
soo…the finches will have to look out for themselves…..luckily most years we dont get cold enough to really threaten them
Hey, crows are birds too.
But they can take care of themselves, no question, better than half of people.
well of course they can take care of themselves
they are assholes
just like people really
i mean its not a coincidence all the worlds richest people are fucking assholes
its fuck you got mine in birb form
I kind of admire crows. They don’t take no guff from nobody, they take care of their own, and they are smart as all get out.
But then we only see one or three at a time where I am, and not the big flocks which can really cause havoc.
are you sure you arent thinking of ravens?
the crows bigger less flocky cousin?
ive never seent a crow without a murder nearby
In the good old US of A, ravens are a Western state thing. They’re much gronkier than our crows, and they look just like the ones I’ve seen in England.
Our crows can form those huge murders not far from me, but exactly around me, they just don’t.
ah righto!
now it all makes sense again!
i forgot…divided from english by a common language
divided from europe by common sense
Ravens usually stay in the mountains in our area but we have a few in our green belt. The crows totally bully them. Crows dominate all birds & if an eagle comes into the hood, they get dive bombed until they move on.
My old neighborhood had a group of blue jays and a group of crows and it was like watching the Sharks and the Jets from West Side Story.
Corvids are incredibly smart. They use tools, they recognize faces, and even have a basic understanding of some principles of physics. Some scientists believe they’re as smart as apes. So yeah, they can take care of themselves.
This is probably the third or fourth time I’ve said this, but someone here posted that they saw crows chase a squirrel into the road and box it in on both sides until a car ran over it. Then they had dinner. I saw the same thing once — crows chasing a squirrel into the road until it got hit by a car. That’s pretty sophisticated cause-and-effect reasoning, and it’s creepy as fuck.
Twas me!
And somehow I never remember. Sorry.
My father enjoyed birdwatching. It is an activity even the mostly housebound can enjoy. Armed with a bird book and binoculars, he was entertained for hours.
I wish I was better at it, but songbirds are so tiny, and then trying to sort out differences between males, females and juvies is even harder. But I guess the challenge is part of the attraction.
In the last several years we’ve seen Mississippi Kites move into the region. They’re mainly in the park near my house, and we occasionally see them flying over our backyard. They’re so beautiful and graceful.
Oh wow, those are pretty.
As most of you know, I live in bird heaven & love it. I just went to get the mail & heard the great horned owl that lives in the woods next to me. We have hummingbird feeders on one side of house & regular feeder on the other. I watch birds battle all day & see eagles, osprey, & hawks almost every day. Lately we have had a seagull that wants to be friends. He lands on my neighbors roof or my deck & just stares at us. My wife wanted to befriend the crows but you do that & you are committed! I think if reincarnation is real, I was a bird in a previous life. In any case, I need birds in my life.
I love gulls at the beach, but I’m glad to leave them behind.
My daughter started college practically next to osprey heaven, but unfortunately when I picked her up a few days ago they had all migrated.
Most leave here in winter but a few stay. My youngest has great blue Herron all around her school & my eldest is mostly eagles & seabirds. They have a few salmon runs right by the school & you can see more eagles than you could imagine when the salmon are spawning.
I have given up trying to keep squirrels from destroying my bird feeders, so now I just throw a big cup of birdseed out down by a tree for them. But I love seeing all the sparrows and cardinals. I also have a ton of dark-eyed juncos down from Canada for the winter and I love seeing them play around and eat birdseed with the other birbs. Sparrows don’t care if the juncos hang out with them, which is nice.
The birds at my feeder are such slobs and snobs tossing out the seeds they don’t like that the squirrels usually don’t bother going after the feeders directly. There’s usually enough on the ground for them to Hoover up without needing to figure out a heist.
Hahahha nice
I seep anywhere from 3-6 squirrels fucking around in the back yard, so maybe they just destroyed the feeders by accident fighting amongst themselves?
Anyways, I stand at the kitchen window and can spot any number of birbs eating seeds in the yard.
Common winter sights are: house finches, American tree sparrows, Eurasian tree sparrows, white-throated sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, bluejays, cardinals, robins, common grackles, downy woodpecker, mourning doves, a Cooper’s hawk.
Less winter common sights are: the gold finches that live across the street in the big cedar tree, mockingbirds, white-crowned sparrows, norther flicker, carolina wren.
Today, I thought I saw a murmuration of starlings (and I thought it was aliiiiitlrlate for them!)…
Turns out?
It was a murmuration of pigeons😳😲😃😁!!!!!
There were SO many, they looked like starlings against the sky, until you were about a quarter-block away, and could SEE their grey under-feathers on their tails, and saw the hundreds who *weren’t* flying in the formation, but were sitting on the electrical wires nearby😄
Made me think of Lochaber, and it was also just COOL to see😁💖💞
My favorite is probably hawks–Red Tails are my “lucky” animal–i see them when things are getting stressful, but will turn out ok (saw one gliding in an unusual spot the other day, and they’ve DEFINITELY been out this week, authentic insurance Rollercoaster happened😉
Saw a damn Baldie, too, on MONDAY–just before everything DID go sideways! (I SWEAR Bald Eagles are my “Warning, Danger Ahead!” bird, when I spot them in new/unusual places! I joke often, with my close friends, about how *I* LIKE Bald Eagles, but they haaaaaaate Me!😉😂🤣, Because so often, seeing one in a new or odd place has meant expensive car repairs, or other difficulty is coming shortly afterward… whiiiich is why seeing the Hawks *shortly* after I spot thd Eagle is such a comfort… I saw 13+ in the hour commute, on the day mom ended up in the hospital having her toe amputated & getting Dx’ed with diabetes. By the time I pulled into my driveway, after seeing them all, I KNEW something was up–then after I pulled my phone out of my pocket & saw how many calls & texts i missed? The numbers I saw made sense.)
I also used to live up by one of MN’s Nuke plants–and because the water hardly ever freezes up there, that town has a SIGNIFICANT population of Trumpeter Swans😁
Those are some COOL birbs–LOUD, but cool–and SO pretty, as they fly against a bright blue sky!😉💖
Those giant flocks and the ways they manage to coordinate in three dimensions are pretty wild to see.
I hope all is OK with the foot surgery.
The foot surgery was years ago–and YEP, she did well in the end!😉💖
It was HELL getting her to the other side of things–she went to the hospital in October of 2013, and fiiiiinally got out of rehab the following May (WITH additional stress & “hiccups in the process” Memorial Day weekend that year!), but we DID get her through ok, eventually😉💖💞
I love birds. When I lived on the Credit River in ‘sauga I got to the point in which two blue jays would sit on my hand. I love blue jays (including the baseball team). I love cardinals (fuck the baseball team). And orioles (the only other team in the AL East I don’t hate). As much as I love those three birds, for some reason I get all excited when I see a red winged black bird.
I fucking love red winged black birds.
Once we got the Red Wings in our backyard, for reasons I don’t know.
I recently found a Detroit Pizza place not too far away. Maybe if I keep ordering, more Red Wings will show up. Hopefully no Tigers or Lions.
This is the type of old school Deadspin comment that even og Ray would like…Ilitch for comments like this.
I’m gonna be in Toronto at some point this summer and I’ll be totally sure to wear a Cardinals shirt at least once just for you.
You mean *in front* of me, right?
Hopefully!! I don’t have dates yet and I’m visiting a cousin but I hope to make time to see you in person!
One of the neat things about St Louis is the variety of environments really close by thanks to all the rivers. So my home is one set of birbs, then I drive to work which is about 8 miles (13 km, see I’m trying to be inclusive to our neighbors who use a smarter measurement system) away as the birbs fly, and see a bunch of waterfowl and migratory birbs. Herons, ducks, stupid asshole Canadian geese, etc. Currently there’s several dozen terns just hanging out.
But there’s a chunk of highway medians and space between exit ramps that is basically prairie up there and I see tons of adorable red-winged blackbirds.
Sandhill cranes are major assholes. They’re highly protected here, so they strut down the middle of busy streets and dare people to fuck with them. They also terrorize other wildlife. I’ve seen them chase ducks out of ponds. And when they fly by honking, all the other birds go dead silent. It’s eerie. I’ve seen entire murders of crows, 50 or 60, squawking in trees, and when they hear a sandhill crane, you could hear a pin drop.
Sandhill cranes are assholes. But damn their hatchlings are cute.