Category Archives: Birds

January 27, 2026 · 23:58

Proof Of Life – January 27th

There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

One project after another at work, I don’t think I’ve had more than a half dozen days off since Halloween, and three of those were Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day. I squeezed in a couple of those days for putting up Christmas lights, but it’s been a marathon. Or more aptly, a triathalon. The audit, the tax returns, the budget, covering for a shorthanded situation on my staff, monthly closings, preparing for the annual Board Meeting…

After being up past 1:00 last night and then up again before 6:00 this morning to tie up loose ends and trying to look semi-human for a 10:00 meeting to go over the latest batch… All of a sudden there wasn’t anything super duper “Oh God we’re all gonna die!” time critical  to do.

So it was time to re-fill the bird seed feeders, that have been empty for the last three weeks.

Sorry, birds.

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Filed under ALS Network, Birds, Paul, Photography

January 10, 2026 · 22:53

Hesperia Christmas Lights 2025 – First Dark

The first night without the lights up is always a sad one. Something’s missing.

The good news, as always, is that five or six days spent putting lights up only take a day or two to take down. Gravity helps.

There was a moment of awe and joy in the whole painful (literally) process. At one point, up on a ladder in a semi-precarious position, on a cold (high 40’s) and windy (15-20 knots with gusts to 30+) afternoon, I noticed a mass of crows headed overhead. I stuck my head out from under the roof and directly overhead, probably not more than 100 feet or so, were two absolutely gorgeous red-tailed hawks circling and hovering in the winds. The image of the crows scrambling to intercept the hawks immediately got compared in my mind to Battle of Britain images of the Spitfires scrambling to climb up to do battle with the German bombers.

The hawks however had another strategy. They caught a thermal and went into a tight spiral in it, their wings never flapping, just cruising up in the jet like they were in an invisible elevator. In less than five minutes they were mere dots in the sky, hundreds of feet up, where the crows couldn’t climb to get them.

Spectuacular, a great treat! I used to watch red-tailed hawks (and other kinds of hawks) at our Scarborough house. It’s such a relief to see them here as well!

Now if we could just get some juncos migrating through…

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Filed under Birds, Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Video

November 22, 2025 · 23:27

A Murder Of Crows

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!”

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography, Video

November 20, 2025 · 23:14

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!

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography, Video

November 10, 2025 · 23:50

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…

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography

October 27, 2025 · 23:10

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!

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Filed under Birds, Photography, Sunsets

October 5, 2025 · 21:56

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.

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Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Video

September 25, 2025 · 23:27

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.

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Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Photography

September 16, 2025 · 23:00

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!

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Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Photography

September 13, 2025 · 22:43

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!

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Filed under Birds, Forever Home