Monthly Archives: August 2009

Neighborhood gang

by Amy Posted on 8 August 2009

A gang of 8 crows has been cawing around our neighborhood. I first noticed them about a month ago in a field about a block from our house. Now they make themselves known almost every morning, nice and early. I love to hear them cawing, because I know they’ve been in trouble from West Nile around here for the past few years. The other day the gang paused outside our window, making a racket while posing for these shots.

American Crow

American Crow

American Crow

The gang shares the honor of being the 22nd species of bird found in our yard.

The yard list so far:

1. American Goldfinch
2. Dark-eyed Junco (slate-colored)
3. Black-capped Chickadee
4. House Finch
5. Mourning Dove
6. House Sparrow
7. Northern Cardinal
8. Red-winged Blackbird
9. Song Sparrow
10. American Robin
11. Downy Woodpecker
12. Brown-headed Cowbird
13. European Starling
14. American Tree Sparrow
15. Common Grackle
16. White-crowned Sparrow
17. Baltimore Oriole
18. Northern Flicker
19. Blue Jay
20. Cooper’s Hawk
21. House Wren
22. American Crow

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Posted in Yard Birds | Leave a comment

Hirundinidaepalooza*

by Amy Posted on 6 August 2009

Last Sunday we rented a canoe for some paddling at Chain O’ Lakes State Park. It was a beautiful morning and an easy paddle.

Chain O Lakes State Park

One of the highlights was seeing large groups of swallows hunting for bugs over the still water and congregating on snags along the shore.

Swallows on a snag

Lots of swallows

Big bunch of swallows

Among them was a very light bird, a possible leucistic Tree Swallow. Leucism (sometimes incorrectly called partial-albinism) is a condition characterized by reduced pigmentation. I’ve never seen a leucistic swallow before, but they’re definitely out there.

Leucistic Tree Swallow?

Leucistic Tree Swallow on snag

Have you ever seen a leucistic bird?

* The original title I wanted to use for this post is apparently the name of a porn movie. That’s some traffic I don’t need on this blog. Hirundididae is the Latin name for the Swallow family of birds. 😉

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Posted in Illinois | 1 Comment

Peering poorly at peeps

by Amy Posted on 5 August 2009

Last week we visited Horicon Marsh. First we drove down Dike Road, which was busy with birders looking for shorebirds.

View of Dike Road

View From Dike Road, Horicon Marsh

We lucked out when a fellow birder pointed out a distant Black-necked Stilt which we could view through our scope. We also flushed a Black-crowned Night-heron and got great looks at the bird in flight. Besides these we saw lots of American Pelicans and several, uh, peeps. Shorebird newbies are we. I’m pretty sure this is a Lesser Yellowlegs.

Lesser Yellowlegs

Dike Road ends (for visitors, anyway) at Main Ditch. We parked by the fishing pier and relaxed a while, enjoying the view.

Main Ditch along Dike Road

We then drove on the northern part of the marsh to the Horicon Ternpike auto tour. Along the way we saw these young Hooded Mergansers in a pond.

Hooded Merganser Babies

We took a short walk along the boardwalk trail about halfway through the auto tour. Here we saw lots of swallows and Black Terns, including the juvenile pictured below, who was crying for attention.

Boardwalk trail on the Horicon Ternpike

Black Tern Juvenile

It was a great morning out at the marsh and we’re looking forward to visiting again in the fall to view migrating waterfowl.

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My visitors came from *where* in July?!

by Amy Posted on 1 August 2009

Here are some of the more interesting search terms that brought visitors to this site during July. You can see previous editions of this monthly post here.

Typos and spelling mistakes were plentiful (and sometimes hilarious) in the search results last month: long sleave t shirts from hawaii; bird siloutte designs; scoreched yard; bondige pictures; pictures of styalized owls; tinest birds of ma; srarrow resisence blue bird house; and images of western oriale nests.

I’ve got my birder gift shop under the same statcounter account as the blog so of course I’m very interested in search results having to do with t-shirts or novelties. However, I don’t think I’ll be offering any anti-pigeon shirt or underwear picture of turkey soon. I think falonry beer steins (another typo!) sounds like a good idea though. And I think I need to come up with a design for the sexy birder, too.

Searches related to the name of this website were magnificent frigate bird sanctuary, frigate bird good luck (works for me), magnificent frigate bird skeletal structure, giant frigate bird image and magnificent photography!!!!! (which they’re not really going to find here, haha).

Pigeons keep bringing in the visitors too, although as usual most searches are anti-pigeon (like the shirt search mentioned above). Others last month were anti pigeon feeder, how to stop pigeons feeding from under bird feeder, and the less negative-sounding a dictionary of pigeons in indiana.

Finally, I think someone made a big discovery they need to share with the world: unknown large birds of the raptor family.

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Posted in Search Terms | 2 Comments