I was out in the back yard, refilling the bird seed feeders, when I heard a commotion overhead.
Something like 40+ crows milling about!
I think that qualifies as a “murder!”
Category Archives: Birds
Hesperia Owl
As mentioned, I’ve seen an owl out on the cinder block wall in the back yard and on the pergola a couple of times, always when it’s dark or just getting there, but I’ve never gotten any pictures.
Not today!
It was after sunset and raining pretty hard, but not yet dark. There it was, and there it stayed for quite a while.
Lousy quality photo due to the low light and high magnification, but there was some nice video opportunities.
Welcome to the Forever Home, my Great Horned Owl friend! I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing you on a regular basis!
Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography, Video
Other Critter Neighbors
In addition to the squirrels (or whatever they are) burrowing under the pergola, and the flocks of wrens, finches, hummingbirds, and scrub jays all feeding at the feeders hanging from the top, we also have some bigger raptors that regularly roost on top of the pergola, particularly at night.
I haven’t caught any of them on camera yet (they spook easily) but I’ve seen the owl(s) several times.
Even if I can’t catch them live, it’s obvious where they like to roost when looking out over the back wall for dinner, or where they bring dinner to feast in peace. The little bits of rodents and small birds, and what appears to be a significant amount of (probably) rabbit fur indicate that the owls are well fed.
It’s sort of a mess – but that’s why we bought a power washer. Now I just need to find the time to assemble it…
Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography
Launch Leftovers
I’m home, but I know who’s the most upset about me being gone for a couple of days. The birds! The sparrows and finches and scrub jays who are chowing down on the seed in the feeders, and who are emptying them in a day, a day and a half at most. When I’m gone for three days, those feeders are seriously empty when I get home. They even eat the parts that they don’t like!
While refilling the feeders about 18:30, there were these amazing, bright, high-level clouds visible to the west:
They look like noctilucent clouds, but those would be incredibly rare this far south. Normally you would only see them way north, in the polar regions.
However, that’s toward where Vandenberg is, and launches out of there are getting close to being a daily occurrence. A quick check showed that a launch had happened at 17:43, just about 45 minutes earlier.
So, there you go! Launch leftovers in the sunset sky. And happy birds now that their feeders are full again!
Filed under Birds, Photography, Sunsets
Bird Butts
I had just refilled the bird seed feeders for the day and wanted to capture the chaos and shennanigans going on with the house finches and house sparrows fighting for spots. (There are lots of spots, four feeders like this one, plus the wires and the beams of the pergola…)
I thought of trying to set up a tripod, but went with uber simplification instead. I just put a chair underneath the feeder, turned the video on, put the phone facing up toward the bottom of the feeder overhead, let it run for a about a half hour, and then edited out the five minutes at the beginning when the birds were still spooked because I had been out there.
In checking out the result, I was surprised to see and hear the iPhone and the chair it’s resting on getting pelted by seeds dropped from above. Don’t worry, the squirrel and the scrub jays will take care of those.
Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Video
Bandit Scrub Jays
Just when I thought that the bird seed couldn’t be disappearing any faster, someone sent a memo to the scrub jays.
They’re big birds, very intelligent, and with beautiful coloration. I enjoy having them here.
Too intelligent sometimes. They’re a bit too big to perch on the feeders, but they’ve figured out that they can hang upside down off of the side, do a chin up, and use their beaks to just scrape whole handfuls of seed over the edge to the ground below.
Once there’s a two-day supply of seed dumped on the ground, then they can hop down and eat it at their leisure.
At one point this morning I saw three separate jays hanging from three separate feeders and all doing this trick together. The finches weren’t much more happier than I was as they sat on top of the wall and the pergola and waited for the jays to leave so they could get back to their own looting and pillaging.
Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Photography
They Don’t Like These
One thing I’ve noticed in refilling the birdseed feeders is that the bottom is always full of these little, round, red seeds:
I don’t know what’s wrong with them – do they not taste good? Are they difficult to pick up? Are they hard and a pain to crack open?
It’s yet another mystery.
Maybe the squirrels will eat them? Waste not, want not!
Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Photography
Finch At Feeder
I refilled the birdseed feeder AGAIN – two days this cycle. And I updated my Chewy “Autoship” order to once every three weeks instead of once every twelve weeks.
As we’ve brought patio furniture, some shelves, a BBQ, chairs, and other stuff onto the large back patio near the pergola, after dining the birds are retiring to rest in the shade on the new resting and roosting locations. I haven’t seen any nest building activity yet (that’s more of a spring thing) but I really would prefer they stay off of the telescope at least. There may be a BBQ cover in the telescope’s near future. (Form follows function!)
They’re also starting to peck at the small apples growing on the apple tree, but they seem to be leaving the pears alone. We’ll see what’s left to harvest in a couple of weeks.
GO TEAM BIRDS!
Filed under Birds, Forever Home
Proof Of Life – September 11th
Bird seed.
At the old house in West Hills we would put out a cup or two a day in bird seed and it would attract house finches, sparrows, juncos, mourning doves, squirrels, and whatever else happened to be passing through. We might get as many as ten or twelve mourning doves, but the other species were smaller flocks.
In the new house, I’ve put up four much bigger hanging feeders full of seed. No juncos, no mourning doves, one scrawny squirrel who as far as I can tell hasn’t yet figured out how to get to the hanging feeders, but will feast on the droppings on the ground. LOTS of house finches and sparrows.
When I put up the first feeder and just had the one out there, it took about two weeks to get emptied. Just a handful of birds had found it. But there were more every day.
When I put up the other three (total of four), the floodgates opened.
They cleaned them all out in a week. I refilled.
They cleaned them all out in four days. I refilled.
Three days. I refilled.
I noticed today that they’re all empty again, and it hasn’t even been 36 hours.
How? Well, when I looked out there this morning there were 50+ birds.
Paging Alfred Hitchcock! The white courtesy phone for Alfred Hitchcock! The black courtesy phone for Roger Thornhill!
If you see us starting a Go Fund Me for bird seed, you’ll know why.
Filed under Birds, Forever Home
Bird Buffet
To be perfectly clear, because I don’t want to be considered a monster, we have set up a buffet to feed the local birds, we are not having a buffet for ourselves consisting of birds.
In the last month I got two of the hummingbird feeders up and one of the seed feeders, but we’ve attracted enough birds so that there’s sometimes a traffic jam, particularly at the one seed feeder. Today I found more of our bird feeders in all of the stacks of boxes filling up the garage and did some work out on the pergola putting up hooks, then cleaned all of the feeders. When all was said and done, we now have four of each kind of feeder, the four hummingbird feeders at the back over the brick wall and the four seed feeders at the front hanging over the turf.
If you look at the first hummingbird feeder on the far left in the first picture, you’ll see this one wasting no time in testing out the new nectar. I literally had just put it up and walked off to take the picture, maybe ten or fifteen seconds, and this one was all over it. And stupid me was worried that it might take a while for the birds to “find” the new feeders.
Here you can see all eight, so let the feasting begin!
Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 