Large Scale Central

Birding

Birding

Where do you go to do that? Bruce Chandler and his wife Jean, go to occoquan bay national wildlife refuge.

Ken - I go all over. Always have a set of binocs in the car. Took a day off from Diamondhead this past year and went to the Mississippi Sandhill Crane refuge to get pics. Recently I have been going on trips with the local bird club in Northern Va: http://www.nvabc.org/trips.htm I live two miles from the Occoquan Bay National Wildlife refuge and can hear owls at night from the Featherstone National Wildlife Refuge. (Two blocks away as the crow flies). The rest is in my backyard or I’ll take note at various steamups that are outside. I maintain my lists on e-bird.

Scott

I get enough birds here right around the house. There’s always somethin unusual flying around, I just never think to get a picture of them…:wink:

When I mow the lawn it’s like the “Battle of Britain” out there with all the purple martins buzzing me.

Birding can happen everywhere. My wife is has made our backyard into a bird haven and we get all sorts of cool birds right there. We even have a resident sharped shin hawk (she doesn’t like him) that appreciates her efforts as well. While sort of brutal its nature at its best. I have personally watched him take out a dove and finch. On the positive side we get at least three varieties of hummingbirds, flickers, gold finches, yellow gross beaks, robins, doves, some ugly brown bird a sparrow, and occasionally a quail. That’s in the backyard. in the surrounding area we have all sorts of stuff. Even red wing blackbirds

Birding…egads, guys…In jolly old England, a “Bird” is a girl, lady, or any member of the female sect. I find good looking “Birds” in restaurants, bars, on bicycles, and even out walking on hiking trails…Summer finds them in all sorts of great outfits, and some even smile back at me…even though I’m minding my own business and not in any way causing them any distress…!!! I’ve even had a few over the years as great friends, who even treated me to dinner…

I wonder if you take your favorite “Bird” to a restaurant; is that what in England would be called, taking her to a “Bird Feeder”…just asking…!!

Fred Mills

Linda has been going crazy doing avian photography since she got the new Nikon D750 and nice lenses.

Since then we’ve recently put a couple feeders out we get a variety of finches, but the rose finches are really multiplying with the new feeders and their numbers (offspring) have more than doubled in no time flat.

We also get scrub jays who will come down to get (demand) meal worms, a nesting pair of beautiful hooded orioles, who only use the hummingbird feeders (much to the chagrin of the Anna’s, Allen’s, and Rufous hummingbirds), towhees, both California and beautiful rufous-sided, Beldings Savannah sparrows (almost made the endanged list with lots of land set aside for them in the San Diego area), various colored grossbeaks, warblers, mocking birds, various hawks, and mourning doves. And these are just the local birds that live on our lot or in the boarding bushes and trees on the adjacent lots.

When the migratory birds pass through…

Picture of “Jay.”

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/jay-portrait-after-bath-linda-brody.html

Fred Mills, BSc, BS, SD (Hons) said:

Birding…egads, guys…In jolly old England, a “Bird” is a girl, lady, or any member of the female sect. I find good looking “Birds” in restaurants, bars, on bicycles, and even out walking on hiking trails…Summer finds them in all sorts of great outfits, and some even smile back at me…even though I’m minding my own business and not in any way causing them any distress…!!! I’ve even had a few over the years as great friends, who even treated me to dinner…

I wonder if you take your favorite “Bird” to a restaurant; is that what in England would be called, taking her to a “Bird Feeder”…just asking…!!

Fred Mills

(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)that’s a whole different pastime that my wife does not approve of. Especially when I am obvious about it with binos. She says I might even get arrested when I take pictures.

Where’s Bruce? He should get in this conversation.

We haven’t done as much birding as we have in the past, but I did get some pretty good pictures this year so far.

An Orchard Oriole

Yellow Breasted Chat

Swamp Sparrow

Scarlet Tanager

The first two were taken at Occoquan Bay Natural Wildlife Refuge in Woodbridge, VA. The sparrow was near Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, and the Tanager was in Monticello Park in Alexandria, VA.

Bruce Chandler said:

Swamp Sparrow

The first two were taken at Occoquan Bay Natural Wildlife Refuge in Woodbridge, VA. The sparrow was near Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, and the Tanager was in Monticello Park in Alexandria, VA.

We have a lot of those around here. Noisy too…(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

That scarlet tanager is beautiful. We get yellow gross beaks (not here yet) that look similar in morphology and they are very pretty as well.

The tanager is really nice. Linda did this orange tanager freehand in water colors from one of her photos. This was one of her very first watercolor efforts. (She’s gotten much better.)

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/orange-tanager-linda-brody.html

Nice photo of lots of birds…

Here is a pr. of Humming baby birds in our Red Wood tree.

Noel, that’s very cool! Do you know what kind they are? We only get the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird here in the East.

I bet that is one tiny nest.

Todd Brody said:

The tanager is really nice. Linda did this orange tanager freehand in water colors from one of her photos. This was one of her very first watercolor efforts. (She’s gotten much better.)

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/orange-tanager-linda-brody.html

Nice work. I’ve never seen the orange tanager.

I have to laugh at the birds who build nests in the trees on my railroad. 4 feet off the ground, now thats aiming low. No, I do know know what kind of bird builds its nests that close to the ground.

Many birds build nests <4 feet off the ground, several of which are in our yard (towhees, sparrows, scrub jays). They are usually in a dense brush/thicket. I’ve seen burrowing owls under the runway at the old Norton Air Station. That’s probaby about as low as bird’s go to “nest.”

I had a couple interesting birding events in the past couple of days here in Maine. Wednesday around noon, I heard a loud and unusual sound and looked up to see a Sandhill Crane flying over…quite rare here on the east coast! and this evening while working on the line I heard the local Bard Owls talking loudly. one was quite close and flew by me to meet his freind in the woods behind the house.

Bruce Chandler said:

Noel, that’s very cool! Do you know what kind they are? We only get the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird here in the East.

I bet that is one tiny nest.

Yea on very small nest… usually only one baby to a nest. We just found another again up on the patio. This was done before… around the same place. You can see the ladder in the background to get up for a close photo.

Nest is built on top of some chimes again. This Mom humming bird is Gray on chest and Green on rest of her. hard to believe she has two babys in there.

http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/noelw/Pine_Trees/SN854887.JPG

We have the Red, and Blue males and some with just Red or Ruby head with Greenish Blue body’s.

There kind of tame and will come right up to your face to see what you are. They sound like a big bumble bee.

Kind of funny tho… two or three of them together will chase off the Mocking birds and Blue Jays away when they have nests with baby’s.

Wife has to make up about one gal. of nectar about every two months for all of the feeder we have around.

Boy… that Scarlet Tanager is a beautiful bird…

Question tho… you showed a Yellow breasted chat. Our’s around here looks like yours and are very small, looks like from the finch family? There black or dark brown head and body with bight yellow breast. We have groups of them fly in once in awhile going after the berry around here. They are real small birds and do a lot of singing.