Wild geranium and a sunset with the still-bare tree branches starkly outlined against the light, a week ago (leaves are out now).
Trillium are still blooming, but coming to an end.
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Anyone have any ideas about this female cowbird’s behavior? This is the second year she’s done it – she sits on an outside windowsill looking in the glass, and periodically she’ll fly up to the third or fourth row of window panes and give the glass a good tap, yielding a solid ‘thunk’. I’m guessing she is seeing reflections of insects – young mosquitoes and the like. I should think that since it’s not very rewarding to her gullet, she would give up the practice, but it continues – this is at least the end of the second full week, this year.
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@SkovandOfMitaze do you know? I have the same thing with a woodpecker, who flies down every minute or so, rapping on the window. We wonder if he sees his own reflection and is trying to fight the handsome male rival. I don’t know! Beautiful pictures, @Dale. Thanks!
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Unfortunately I don’t know anything about bird behavior or even bird IDing. I know some random things from various species, and I understand their evolutionary story fairly well, such as essentially all bird species now evolved from ground dwelling birds. That in the great scheme of birds most were ground dwelling and the typical they evolved from dinosaurs type stuff but I am not sure about the rest yet.
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The birds, THE BIRDS!!
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Nice serenery.
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Beautiful! Is that fireweed or phlox?
We call it sweet rocket.
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Unfortunately, a rather fuzzy picture of a cute porcupine in our yard on coming home tonight. He was just under my boys’ bedroom window. Thankfully, our dog was in the kennel, and the porcupine did not come in contact with him
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Thanks for this. I’ve only ever seen one in a tree along a trail around Lake Louise in Canada. Such a cool creature.
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It’s the first time I have seen one here, too. I imagine they are really shy. My son and I are thinking of setting up a trail camera.
Lake Louise is beautiful!
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As to birds, here is an unusual sight I encountered a year ago.
A family of five Loggerhead Shrikes.
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Neat. It has been a while since seeing one, but as a child living on the farm, we commonly saw them, and the grasshoppers they impaled on the barbed wire fences. Commonly called them “butcher birds.”
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Such great bird life. I forget, do you have any ratites down under? Cassowaries may have been raptors in a former life.
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I haven’t seen any around my place but there are cassowaries and emus up in the Daintree.
I had an adventure with one of them. It was in a retreat center where I was staying. There was at least on cassowary that was being fed bananas. It came one day when I was there alone. There were no bananas in the fridge. It wasn’t going to take no for an answer. It tried to come into the kitchen. I grabbed a zucchini and threw it a little further from him where he could see it. It went for the zucchini and I quickly closed the door and even the windows. lol.
It has a huge horn on its head that can do a lot of damage. And it was my height. Bit too close for comfort.
BTW I am still looking through my files for good kookaburra laughing for you. I’m sure I got some good ones.
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I understand the nails on its feet are more feared than those of any other bird, ostriches included.
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