Yard Watch

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If I spend a lot of time outdoors--and who wouldn't with migration in full swing?--I don't have much time for adding to my blog.  But since I set up this blog to keep track of what's happening in the yard, I will write quickly tonight and show a few pictures. (If I'm tempted to tell stories or get too long-winded, I'll cut it short. Tonight it's just the news. )

First, you may have noticed that I changed the photograph  behind the blog's title above.  The Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are just so much fun to watch that I wanted them to look over the page. (See this earlier post for other photos.) Every morning they stand or sit on the railing of the deck by the river, waiting for the neighbors to put out seed.  Today while my husband fished on the dock, I walked  up the stairs to the deck where the ducks had  perched, to within  ten feet of them, and they didn't move -- until I started talking too loudly and they flew in their awkward way to the next dock.

I'll be happy to see the ducks bring their family along with them later in the summer.  I'm not sure where the nest is--they are still spending much of the day here, so they may not have a nest yet.  Last summer I thought maybe they had nested on top of a neighbor's old shed where they spent a lot of time.   

Other nesting news:  Northern Mockingbirds have completed a nest in a small Anacua tree in the yard just to the east.  Another pair of mockingbirds are close by, perhaps in the yard to the west.    Brown-crested Flycatchers still take dried grass into a small hanging bird house though its proximity to the garage makes them nervous. The Altamira Orioles, Hooded Orioles, and Kiskadees are relatively quiet, not much movement in and out of the nests.  That may mean  they are sitting on eggs.  Of course, cowbirds keep close watch on all and harass them continually.  Green Jays  today followed each other around the tree canopy over the driveway, ruffling up their feathers and almost snuggling.  I know of no nest yet, but there must be one close by.  A pair of Northern Cardinals are also eating at feeders in the yard off and on all day.  They are certainly nesting nearby also.  The Curved-bill Thrashers are probably sitting on eggs by now in their nest in the neighbor's yucca. 

Every morning, a large male Wild Turkey flies over from across the river to walk around (and gobble) in the yard .  Today he flew to an entry deck behind the house, not far from where Brad was fishing on the dock.   They gobbled at each other for a bit  (I wonder what the bird thought of the fisherman)  and then the turkey moved around the house to stroll the driveway.  Brad also saw bottlenose dolphins this morning feeding in the river.  I'm hoping to catch them in a photo soon.  The dolphins are  one of my favorite things about the river.

The last few days have been good  ones for watching spring migrants.  Six new species have been added to the 2010 Yard List since Monday.   (The list is to the right in the sidebar.  I always set the recent additions in red.)

A beautiful male Rose-breasted Grosbeak has been in the yard for a couple of days.  He's not eating the orange half that's in the photo, of course--that's for the five species of orioles, Great-tailed Grackles, Green Jays, and woodpeckers.  He's partial to the sunflower seeds.  That's a picture of a grosbeak female to the right. These birds are a little skittish and shy at first, but once they find a feeder with large striped sunflowers, they settle in and eat for as long as there's still seed.  I think their large seed-cracking beaks make them look comical.

Female and juvenile Rose-breasted Grosbeaks look similar to the male Black-headed Grosbeaks we sometimes have in the winter. (Look at this post for a photo of last January's first-year male.)

 (Yesterday was actually a two-grosbeak day when a Blue Grosbeak flew in very briefly.  Rust-red wing bars distinguish it from the very similar Indigo Bunting. ) 

The best migrant news is that the Painted Buntings are here.  Monday I saw a male fly out of the drive and across the road to  the patch of weeds beside the sorghum  field. I watched from the deck for awhile, and when it didn't appear again, I walked to the end of the drive and was lucky enough to get photos.  Not great photos --- since they were taken from across the road, but any picture of a Painted Bunting, even if fuzzy and small, is fun to look at--just like the birds.  So brightly colored with red breasts, blue heads and wings, red eye-rings and green backs, these birds do not look real but like they were drawn by a child with a brand new box of crayons. 

                                                                  
In the picture on the left, a second bunting hides behind another.  Until I downloaded the photo to my computer,  I thought I had seen  just one bird!  Arching above the birds in the picture is a seed-head of guinea grass that had grown up around a stand of century plants. An invasive plant that gardeners around here battle continually, guinea grass is tenacious and tough to pull up.  If you let it grow too long (if you're a lazy gardener like me) you have to dig the clumps out of the ground with a shovel.  I know I shouldn't,  but I let them go to seed when the buntings are migrating because that's where I always see the beautiful birds-- in the untidy clumps of grass in my yard.  (I guess pulling a few in my yard wouldn't help much anyway since across the road there's plenty of it. )

Yesterday was actually a two-grosbeak day when a Blue Grosbeak flew in very briefly.  Rust-red wing bars distinguish it from the very similar Indigo Bunting.  I hope I have a chance for a photo if it returns.

Not all the birds of the yard are as brightly colored as the Painted Bunting. But the eye of the Bronzed Cowbird is as red as the bunting's brightest feathers. Look at the ruff of feathers around this guy's neck that he can puff up when he really wants attention. (If it were not late as I write this, I'd talk more about this amazing ---but not beloved-- bird.  I'll put that off for another time when I'm not just giving a yard report.) 

Other new birds I've seen and added to the 2010 Year List since my last report :  Western Kingbirds perching at the top of the Royal Poinciana ; a  Swainson's Hawk soaring high above the fields; and a  Willow Flycatcher  making quick forays over the driveway to catch bugs from a perch in a mesquite.  (The flycatcher obligingly sang  as it flew away so that I could tell it was a Willow and not an Alder. Usually I have no idea which of those two little flycatchers I'm seeing.)

Well, that's the end of this installment of the backyard report.

To borrow from Garrison Keillor:  That's the news from  the Arroyo Colorado...where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the birds are above average.

Paparazzi

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Sometimes I feel like I'm one of the paparazzi spying on celebrities with my camera.  But, of course, the celebrities of my yard are its birds.  I've spied on them with scope and binoculars for years.  Now  with a digital point-and-shoot zoom camera, I am  relentless.

Hooded Orioles continued to be among the most spied upon birds in our yard today.  They were everywhere:  bathing, eating orange halves, sipping nectar from the hummingbird feeders and the bottlebrush blooms, following each other around from tree to tree, calling from the top of the ash tree, males chattering and scolding other males, females inspecting nest sites in the palm trees.  Two pairs, at least, have claimed the yard as their own, doing almost everything as "couples."  I spy on them with binoculars and capture them in photos.

The female in the photo here was not bathing alone.  Just out of the picture, still in the bath but obscured by foliage is the male. I don't think their actual nest building has begun.  I have yet to see them carrying plant material.  From previous years, I know that their nests are amazing little pouches made of  fibers stripped from the palm fronds, probably torn away from the base of the fronds that still cling to the trunk.  Now that I have a camera with a zoom lens I'll be able to photograph a nest this year.  The females make holes in the palm fronds and then suspend the nests under them, weaving the fibers tightly into a small pouch.

The first Orchard Oriole of the season stopped by the bottlebrush tree yesterday.  See if you can spot him in this photograph.  It may look like just a blob of brick-red and black, but it is a bird if you look closely.  (Do you feel like you're looking at a photo of Jennifer Aniston taken from two blocks away? Paparazzi photos are sometimes just little blobs, too.)  Several females were in the tree at the same time,  probably some of them Orchards.  To speculate about their relationship really is too paparazzi-like, so I won't, but I can say there were several female orioles, one Hooded male, and one Orchard male. 

Tropical Kingbirds are another new tick off the year's yard list.  I think they've been here all along,  but today was the first time this year I had heard them.  Unless they sing, I can't distinguish them from the Couch's Kingbirds, so I was glad to hear the ascending pip-pip-pip-pip of the Tropical Kingbird that sang from the electric wire today. I can now officially list them in the sidebar Yard Birds 2010.

Tonight the most noticeable birds on the river have been a large number of Snowy Egrets that even now after dark are circling, reflecting the fishing light as they fly.  Little bait fish startle under them, exploding like silver fireworks in circles of light.  We see Snowy Egrets all year here, but these must be migrating.  They struggle mightily against a strong east wind as they navigate down river.  A few have just landed in one of the trees on the far bank.

The buoyancy of the Snowy Egret's flight helps distinguish them from cattle egrets that have also been traveling the river in large numbers.  Of course, the bird's yellow feet are unmistakable if you can spot them.  Notice the "golden slippers"  in the photo of the flying bird, taken two weeks ago as we fished upriver. 

Below is a picture of egrets that rested in the trees across from our yard two days ago.  At the time, I thought they were Cattle Egrets,  like the ones I'd seen on the deck of the boat lift the day before (see Wednesday's post for a photo), but maybe they were Snowy Egrets.  The paparazzi doesn't always draw the right conclusions--or if it does, it's not known for truthfulness.)   Which egrets are these, really?

Friday we went to South Padre Island for lunch and stopped by the Convention Center where we enjoy strolling the boardwalks out into the marsh along the side of the Laguna Madre, watching shorebirds, rails, gallinules, bitterns, and other birds, as well as a resident alligator. We were surprised to find the boardwalk blocked off.  A sign told us to enter (and pay $5 each) from the South Padre Island World Birding Center next door.  I was disappointed, slightly angry, and not rich enough to pay ten bucks for a brief stopover, so we watched the trees, shrubs, and water features around the Convention Center for warblers and took some very long-distance photos of the terns, gulls, and Black Skimmers that were relaxing on the shore by the Laguna Madre.

I'm sorry that families and retired Winter Texans ("Snowbirds"), not to mention locals like us who wanted to make a quick stop,  may have been priced out of a wonderful site for birding.  I felt kind of like paparazzi, unwelcome and  sneaking a look through my camera.

Nevertheless, lots of birds were there, though far away.  Here are a couple of  the more interesting photos. If you click on them and enlarge, you will see all the interesting things the various birds are doing. What kinds of terns are in the top picture?  What kinds of gulls are in the bottom one? (Sometimes the paparazzi don't even know whom they're taking pictures of!)

The Black Skimmers are among my favorite shore birds.  I remember how excited I was the first time I saw them on the Alabama coast years ago,  skimming over a small brackish lake near our campground with that long lower mandible scooping the water.  In the first photo, they're the ones with the long black and orange beaks.  In the second photo, flies toward the gulls on the fence. This bird's posture in flight is quite recognizable (but I guess that's true of most birds).

Black Skimmers fly over the arroyo at night, white bellies reflecting the light and dark backs and wings fading into the night.  It's one of the reasons I like to awaken in the night and gaze over the river from an upstairs window. 

It's not just birds we see from our yard and windows.   Coyotes wade along the river,  bobcats hunt there occasionally, and this morning a deer ran along the shore, water splashing around its feet. But we're not seeing one favorite mammal nearly as often as in other years: the bottlenose dolphins.  I hope that doesn't signal something wrong in the river or a decrease in dolphin in the ocean or intracoastal waterway.  Some years they have been daily visitors along  our Arroyo Colorado, a brackish river of saltwater and fresh, feeding and leaping out of the water, swimming in groups up to a dozen, small ones alongside their parents.  Perhaps we will start seeing them again soon.

Yesterday morning as I watched a deer running through tall grass above the bank on the other side of the arroyo, spying from my living room window,  two Wild Turkeys were startled by the deer and flew up to the top of an Ebony  tree.   Of course I ran for my camera.  For  the next quarter of an hour I watched the male turkey fanning, then folding, then fanning its tail. The wind was blowing so hard I don't see how the bird managed to keep its balance, but it did.

And I managed to get some photos.  They were not good ones:  the camera was so far from the bird, the lens zoomed in so far,  that they are indistinct and fuzzy.  But that's often the  case with paparazzi photos, too, isn't it?

 Just think of this as not National Geographic but National Enquirer! I'm your paparazzo stopped by a river, or a blocked-off boardwalk, spying with camera and scope for a long-distance peak at our celebrities.