It was “fill the feeder” day. I didn’t put out the new fancy birdseed because I decided I needed to use up the older stuff first. For a long time, there were no birds.
Later in the afternoon, there was a birdie fiesta in progress. I took pictures. I would have taken more pictures, but (1) I was hungry and needed lunch, and (2) I needed to leave some time to process the photographs.
That’s what I’ve been doing most of the day. Developing pictures. And I ate a sandwich. Which the dogs wanted very much. But I wanted it too. I asked them, “Hey if I’m hungry because you ate my lunch, are you going to give ME treats?” Not one of them could give me a solid “yes” on that, so I went on eating. I actually ate the entire sandwich, but Bonnie cleaned up the crumbs. It’s her job and she’s good at it.
A good friend of mine who lives in Australia reminded me that you can’t always believe the maps in the bird books because he sees birds in his yard that supposedly live hundreds of kilometers to the north, yet there they are.
He pointed out there are trains, trucks, cars and all the other kinds of transports. Birds travel. They don’t have to fly all the way. Instead, they hitchhike. These birds live in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma. They also, apparently, live in my woods.
I’ve learned a lot about how birds fly. That they always put down their landing gear before they touch the feeder. That they dive off the feeder with wings still folded and I think they really enjoy doing it. They really like flying. It’s not just how they get from place to place. They seem to have fun, too.
There was a lot of flying going on. It got pretty competitive. Despite the fact that I really wanted to get more flying, even with my finger ON the shudder, I can’t hold the really big lens up all the time and the moment I let it down for a minute, I miss the take, the landing, and the little in-the-air kerfuffles of bird-on-bird.
Don’t think bigger birds necessarily win these battles. As often as not, the little ones push the bigger ones away. It’s more about the aggression level of the bird than it’s inherent power.
I took more than 100 pictures today and I don’t think I processed even a quarter of them. I ran out of time before I ran out of photographs. More will come.
We have “hoards” of whitewinged doves. And then grackles I’m told. Saw them in the sun today. A beautiful blue hue shines out.
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I think this is our only dove. Otherwise, we have rock doves, aka pigeons. There are birds that live around here that don’t seem to live in OUR woods. Some of them prefer being near the water and live along the rivers. The crows like to fish and mostly live near the rivers. We live IN an oak woods, so we have pretty much all woodland birds. LOTS of woodpeckers!
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Fun!! I’m starting to enjoy watching the birds in our back yard.
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What a wonderful parade of birds!
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There will be more when I put out the fancier food. Also, in the spring, we get a ton of transient migratory birds on their way to Canada. We also have a lot of hawks and the occasional eagle, but they aren’t seed-eaters, so we meet them when they have killed something and are chowing down in our driveway. I always tell them to take their leftovers, please.
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The larger birds of prey are magnificent, but I’d be inclined to agree that they should take their leftovers with them!
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So far, so good. They take everything and at least I don’t have to bury it!
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Fantastic pictures. You have a remarkable talent.
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Thank you, though the birds do most of the work. My job is getting my reflexes to work fast enough to catch the action. I still miss at least 80% of the various antics.
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You can make a short video!
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WE rarely get pigeons or doves. They stay in town and sit on the rooftops.
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They used to sit on rock ledges. I guess city rooftops are as close as they can get now … and the food is more interesting.
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How I love your flying lessons…. so interesting and beautiful to watch. Thank you.
I personally would call your mourning dove The Cleaning Troupe…. Cannot do smileys any longer, the iPad made a mess all on its own with so called updates and whatnot and now the keyboard doesn’t want to go back to what HH designed at the beginning. Much under/the/breath swearing will be done before i’l be back to normality with regards to writing here…..
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My computer has been kind of weird lately too. I suspect it’s the downloads from Microsoft. The last two have not been very good at all and my computer has completely locked when I restarted it in the morning.
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same here….. aren’t we bothered with those tech wizzards that leave us in their wake seething with annoyance?! 😉
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I’m sure birds do enjoy flying for flying’s sake. If they didn’t they would sit around in trees a lot more. I haven’t seen the diving myself but I see the larger birds gliding sometimes especially the cockatoos that fly over sometimes.
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It has been interesting, watching the birds “play” in the air. I’ve seen seals play “king of the hill” on a raft along the Pacific and the dogs play it on the sofa. It must be the ONLY game that every animal knows how to play 😀
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Excellent photos Marilyn, the birds seem to have their own personalities.
Leslie
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As the climate changes more and more animals are shifting out of their ‘traditional’ ranges. Yet another consequence whose impact is starting to be noticeably felt.
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