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Apr. 17th, 2020 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynWell, I'm awake.
The birds are pretty active this morning. Haven't seen or heard the raven, but that's okay. I wasn't seeing or hearing it every day, just whenever it decided to show up. I've been marking down other birds for eBird.org, of course. At least partly because this month's Birder of the Month will be chosen from people who have at least twenty lists of sightings/other identifications made in their registered yards, and the birder of the month wins a free pair of good binoculars. Yes, I know. Do [$HOBBY] for the joy of it, collect information for the sake of Science, bla bla bla. I'm aware I'm unbelievably unlikely to ever win anything but it'd be nice to win those binoculars. I'll keep saving up in the meantime.
Mostly I see/hear house sparrows around here. And starlings. We get house finches, too, but the fact is that unless I see a red/purple male I can't tell house finches apart from sparrows until I'm right on top of them, so I may be seeing them and just not recognizing it. Every so often I hear white-throated sparrows, but around here it's a little harder to actually see them than it is in the city- when I was passing through Post Office Square every day I would stop next to a few of the grassy patches and wait, and quite often I'd see white-throated sparrows there among the others. Here I mostly have to listen for the song.
I'm hearing a lot of red-winged blackbirds the past few days here. Never mind the robin, the red-winged blackbird is my harbinger of spring. No offense to the American robin but when I am seeing you in full fatbird mode in Boston in late January/early February you are no longer the Bird That Means Spring Is Here. Red-winged blackbirds generally don't show up until spring is right on top of you, at least around here. Admittedly, I mostly hear them in the vicinity of my apartment rather than see them; if I want to actually see them I have to go over to the local seaside trails, which are partly wooded, partly salt marsh. RIDICULOUS numbers of them there. They like swamp grass, I think. The trick then is telling them apart from grackles if they're not calling and if they're facing me/nonbreeding males, or starlings if they're female.... oh, gods, the grackles, we're getting huge numbers of them lately, too. Usually late in the day, and usually on the next block or so over to a greater number than here, but they do occasionally wind up in groups of ten or twenty in the trees at the edge of this yard. I think they're waiting for a crack at the neighbor's feeder.
A little further afield I have identified a specific pair of mallards. I've been seeing them on the local shoreline portion where I hunt sea glass, on the next leg of shoreline between a private pier and a rocky jetty, along the beach stretch after that, and in the trail area with the swamp grass and salt marsh. I know it's the same pair because only the top portion of the male's head is green; he looks like he's wearing a green scalp over female-feathered lower head. He's got vivid blue wing patches with white edge bars, and bright orange legs, but the head... yeah. As far as I can tell mallards aren't supposed to lose their green feathers in favor of brown until rather later in the year. I may take my actual camera with me next time I go birdwatching on the beach/the trails so I can get a decent picture of him if he shows up. (Oh, and he's loud. I realized he was the bird I was seeing up the beach yesterday when I started hearing QUANK QUANK QUANK QUANK QUANK from yards away. From what I understand, females aren't generally that loud.)
There's assloads of other birds in the area, and every time I go anywhere along the shore that gives me a view of Snake Island I wind up having to document the number of oystercatchers I report because they're apparently not very common elsewhere in the area but RIDICULOUSLY frequent on that particular landform, but right now that's what's coming to mind birdswise.
The birds are pretty active this morning. Haven't seen or heard the raven, but that's okay. I wasn't seeing or hearing it every day, just whenever it decided to show up. I've been marking down other birds for eBird.org, of course. At least partly because this month's Birder of the Month will be chosen from people who have at least twenty lists of sightings/other identifications made in their registered yards, and the birder of the month wins a free pair of good binoculars. Yes, I know. Do [$HOBBY] for the joy of it, collect information for the sake of Science, bla bla bla. I'm aware I'm unbelievably unlikely to ever win anything but it'd be nice to win those binoculars. I'll keep saving up in the meantime.
Mostly I see/hear house sparrows around here. And starlings. We get house finches, too, but the fact is that unless I see a red/purple male I can't tell house finches apart from sparrows until I'm right on top of them, so I may be seeing them and just not recognizing it. Every so often I hear white-throated sparrows, but around here it's a little harder to actually see them than it is in the city- when I was passing through Post Office Square every day I would stop next to a few of the grassy patches and wait, and quite often I'd see white-throated sparrows there among the others. Here I mostly have to listen for the song.
I'm hearing a lot of red-winged blackbirds the past few days here. Never mind the robin, the red-winged blackbird is my harbinger of spring. No offense to the American robin but when I am seeing you in full fatbird mode in Boston in late January/early February you are no longer the Bird That Means Spring Is Here. Red-winged blackbirds generally don't show up until spring is right on top of you, at least around here. Admittedly, I mostly hear them in the vicinity of my apartment rather than see them; if I want to actually see them I have to go over to the local seaside trails, which are partly wooded, partly salt marsh. RIDICULOUS numbers of them there. They like swamp grass, I think. The trick then is telling them apart from grackles if they're not calling and if they're facing me/nonbreeding males, or starlings if they're female.... oh, gods, the grackles, we're getting huge numbers of them lately, too. Usually late in the day, and usually on the next block or so over to a greater number than here, but they do occasionally wind up in groups of ten or twenty in the trees at the edge of this yard. I think they're waiting for a crack at the neighbor's feeder.
A little further afield I have identified a specific pair of mallards. I've been seeing them on the local shoreline portion where I hunt sea glass, on the next leg of shoreline between a private pier and a rocky jetty, along the beach stretch after that, and in the trail area with the swamp grass and salt marsh. I know it's the same pair because only the top portion of the male's head is green; he looks like he's wearing a green scalp over female-feathered lower head. He's got vivid blue wing patches with white edge bars, and bright orange legs, but the head... yeah. As far as I can tell mallards aren't supposed to lose their green feathers in favor of brown until rather later in the year. I may take my actual camera with me next time I go birdwatching on the beach/the trails so I can get a decent picture of him if he shows up. (Oh, and he's loud. I realized he was the bird I was seeing up the beach yesterday when I started hearing QUANK QUANK QUANK QUANK QUANK from yards away. From what I understand, females aren't generally that loud.)
There's assloads of other birds in the area, and every time I go anywhere along the shore that gives me a view of Snake Island I wind up having to document the number of oystercatchers I report because they're apparently not very common elsewhere in the area but RIDICULOUSLY frequent on that particular landform, but right now that's what's coming to mind birdswise.
