Pages Tagged “Birds”
Reviews
- The Birding Dictionary
★★★★★
Rosemary Mosco
A delightful collection of comedic ‘definitions’ of various terms one might encounter while watching birds (or interacting with people who do), filled with the style of humor and illustration the author brings to her comics. - Birding Is My Favorite Video Game
★★★★★
Rosemary Mosco
A fun collection of cartoons about nature (not just birds!) collected from Bird and Moon. Mostly funny, a few serious. - A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching
★★★★★
Rosemary Mosco
A fast, funny, informative read about pigeons, their long history with humans, appearance and behavior, and even modern extreme pigeon breeds.
Blog Posts
- Turtle! Duck!
Finally getting around to sorting through photos from a walk at the pond and botanical gardens at Polliwog Park…um…two months ago. The third duckling on the right was spooked by the turtle surfacing its head right next to it. Between this shot and the next, a few seconds later, it had darted away and hidden […]
- Hungry Hawk
Photos of a hawk that brought its breakfast of fresh pigeon to a tree, and the crows that tried to scare it off.
- Odd Geese
Grooming geese: Nature’s panorama fail. Seriously, though, I was determined to get some decent photos of these two geese because they are unusual. They’re clearly Canada Geese in terms of body shape and the pattern of markings. But every other goose of this type that I’ve seen has had white patches on the sides of […]
- Humming…birb?
An Anna’s hummingbird perched at local park. Most of the time they donât stay in one place long enough for me to even focus on them, never mind catch a photo. Even when they pause somewhere like this one, it’s usually just for a few moments before they fly off again. Of course, the reason […]
- Dance of the House Finches
Two house finches, a male and a female, trading spots on on a cable over the course of five photos.
- Bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.
I find myself thinking of “The Creation of Ãa” every time I see a hawk in the distance.
- Flappy Bird (No, Not That One!)
I don’t often get good photos of hummingbirds, since they move so quickly. I wouldn’t call this a good shot, but it’s an interesting one!
- Birds in the Social Distance
I finally recovered enough from the flu to get out for a walk in the neighborhood (while that’s still an option). More people were out than I expected, but they were all either solo or in small groups, keeping their distance. And it really helped my stress levels. I didn’t even go very far, just […]
- Last Walk Along the Coast Before the Virus (No, Not That One)
Last weekend, before the flu hit me, I tried to de-stress by going somewhere for a photo-and-nature walk. I ended up at the actual Redondo Beach, south of the pier. Partly because there was nowhere to park near the pier due to the Kite Festival, which now that I think of it may have been […]
- Hawkspotting
I’ve been seeing hawks lately when I’m out walking, which is new. I know partly it’s that I’m actively looking for suburban wildlife, but I’ve been doing that since last June when I started participating in iNaturalist. I started noticing how many squirrels and sparrows and phoebes and finches were around (in addition to the […]
- Bluebird Valentine
I spotted a western bluebird on Valentine’s Day morning. Seems appropriate. (Spotted in a tree at a city park. As I was trying to aim my camera, it flew down and landed on top of a birdhouse nearby, making it easier to see.) Update: This was the last photo I posted to Instagram before I […]
- Winter Birds of Madrona Marsh
I went hiking at the marsh preserve this weekend and was astonished at just how many different types of birds I saw. Five species of ducks alone (it is winter, after all) — not just the more common mallards, but shovelers, teals, wigeons, and one I hadn’t heard of before called redheads (for obvious reasons). […]
- Today’s Bird: Black Phoebe
A Black Phoebe spotted on my walk to lunch a few days ago, near an office building. It perched there, maybe 10 feet away from me, and actually stayed put while I walked around looking for different angles. Then it flew up into a tree.
- Hawk or Dove?
Usually, iNaturalist’s AI is pretty good at narrowing down a plant or animal to a genus, but sometimes it can get confused. Like this pigeon sitting on a silk floss tree branch. It was “pretty sure” it was a hawk. Um, nope! I can sort of see that with the first image, but the second […]
- No, those aren’t brush strokes. It’s just digital zoom.
After several days not being able to see any of the birds I could hear when I went for a walk on break from work, I saw a whole bunch of them hanging out on a lawn, eating seeds or bugs or whatever it is that these particular birds eat. Of course since I’d been […]
- No Fishing Allowed
Photo: A seagull perched on a post, looking at a No Fishing sign.
- Office Park Ponds
Photos: Rain has turned the empty lots in the Irvine Spectrum green…and for the first time I remember, filled hollows with water to create temporary ponds.
- Man-Eating Bird
Fossils linked to Maori legend of man-eating bird The giant Haast’s Eagle, which died out at least 500 years ago, was originally thought to have been a scavenger, but new analysis of fossils indicates that it was a lion-level predator…making it the probable basis for the Maori Te Hokioi legend.
- Swoop Warning
Well, that’s encouraging. I mean, nothing makes lunchtime better than worrying you might be about to star in a Hitchcock remake.
- Nene Xing
The Nene (roughly nay-nay), a.k.a. the Hawaiian Goose, is Hawaii’s state bird. It’s also endangered. There’s supposed to be a (comparatively) large population in Hawaiâi Volcanoes National Park, but we didn’t see a single one all week. All we saw were a zillion of these signs warning us to avoid hitting them. Maybe it was […]
- Ducks… er, make that Geese
There’s a park just past the corner of Elrond and Ridge Route, and as I left that intersection I spotted a flock of about ten rather large ducks (Edit: it has been pointed out to me that most of these are actually Canada geese) walking across the park. I pulled over to start taking pictures, […]