Wednesday, April 15, 2009

This life is for the birds

Some days I have to blog about items that might be considered less serious. Today, it's about the birds frequenting our bird feeder. We have a lot of finches as can be seen at the right. Note the finch that seems to be hung in mid-air. No, I didn't hang him there, he's in mid-flight. There seem to be two kinds of finches, the yellow and some that are plain gray. I've been told the males are more colorful (they're showing off), if that's true they are sorely lacking for females. Or maybe they are going out to seek for food and then they take it back home.
This second picture just shows the number of finches we have.





We also have some birds that are too lazy to pick their own food out of the feeders. They just pick up whatever falls on the ground. I'm not sure what kind of birds these are, I call them doves. If you know what this really is, let me know.






Hard to see in this picture, but there's a robin beside my electrical box. He's too shy to come around the finches, but I've seen these guys around a lot. I'm glad I can recognize a robin when I see one.






When the crows come around, they scare away the finches. Here's one peeking out from behind the feeder. They are the bullies of the bird world.









While they may be bullies, they are actually very beautiful. Their head and neck is a deep, royal blue.


Comments on birds and the types here appreciated. Know any bird lovers? My favorite bird is chicken....

8 comments:

Randy said...

One of my co-workers saw my blog and sent me a response by email. I'll post her comments here. (Thanks Shirley).

The top two are American Goldfinches. Only the males are vivid yellow, and only in summer. Ours are just beginning to get yellow, and look sort of
splotchy.

The other bird is the Mourning Dove. He's not lazy; some birds are just ground feeders. One of the most beautiful ground feeders we get is the Rufous-Sided Towhee (she included a picture).

Thomas said...

The woman next door has a bird feeder, so we get a lot of them flying over our backyard. Our Pomeranian always barks when she sees this. It's as if she's saying, "Hey, this is my turf. Amscray!"

I also love chicken and rarely eat red meat anymore because of my love for it. Most likely healthier for me.

Brooke said...

I was going to say that that second pic is a Mourning Dove, but it looks like you've figured it out.

They have an almost owl-like cooing call that sound peaceful and somewhat sad.

They're rather common in the Ohio valley.

Brooke said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Steve: The Lightning Man said...

All I get in my yard is the neighbor's stray cats....at work though, I see gulls and peilicans and buzzards, and even a couple mourning doves. Oh, and the occasional dolphin....

Randy said...

Thomas, glad you picked up on the chicken part of the story...

Brooke, I've heard the owl-like sound the mourning dove makes. I knew it wasn't a real owl, but wasn't sure what it was. I try to whistle back at it, but once felt like one was going to come down and try to use my head for mating purposes. No more whistles for me.

I wonder why the doves are in mourning?

Mojo, the gulls and buzzards can be somewhat agressive. I'd like to get some pictures of the pelicans. And dolphins always remind me of flipper (and make me hungry).

Thanks to all.

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