Naturally this is the season for baby birds. And let me tell you, they're everywhere.
Let's start a few days ago when I noticed a Western Kingbird fledgling on a pile of rocks, waiting for its parents to feed it.
These are surprisingly hard birds to photograph, so I was pleased to get these shots.
Here's an adult.
Next up, a juvenile black-capped chickadee that got under our porch roof and couldn't quite find its way out for a bit. Its wings weren't the strongest, so it blundered around for a few minutes.
Here's a darling little fledgling robin (I'm a sucker for robins) that hung around inside the strawberry enclosure. Made me want to pinch his little cheek. The parents were clucking around me in alarm, so of course I didn't get any closer.
And then there are the magpies. I can't pretend to enjoy these fledglings as much. They're noisy and raucous and demanding, and they're everywhere. You can distinguish juvies from adults by the length of their tail feathers.
(Bonus photo: Here's Frumpkin watching the magpies on the roof.)
And finally, the pièce de résistance, some killdeer. Here's the parent:
S/he was shepherding around four offspring, which were moving around fairly fast. I was lucky to get all four in one photo.
Even though we have killdeer everywhere, it's rare to glimpse the babies.
That's our inventory of baby birds so far.
so cute! I have noticed that we have a lot of birds this year. Usually we do not have many, never could figure out why. But this year we have robins flying and walking all over the place. Our dog just looks at them as if they are family members. Heck he even just looked at the deer the other day since they were walking in the woods and not coming into the garden/yard area. He seemed to think they are going the right way and I am not going to confuse them at all.
ReplyDeleteI love the chicken wire in the window! I had to do that to my porch years ago because cats were tearing out the screening from inside to get out and the Coons were ripping it up from the outside to get in (to cat food). Both sets of animals really got in a huff over the wire but finally learned to live with it. Frumpkin looks frustrated
ReplyDeleteAll the babies are adorable. Since getting chickens I love birds a whole lot more, which may sound silly. But birds are good companions, even if you only get to watch them.
I have my own chimney cleaning and repair business here in North Idaho. I removed an adolescent owl from a chimney last week. It was stuck in there for 6 days. But it made it and rejoined it's family up in a large tree.
ReplyDeleteBaby Killdeer are SOOOO cute!
ReplyDeleteMy trophy for the year was a male Blue Grosbeak. My Merlin App picked him up by song. I got some retired colleagues out here who are 'professional' bird chasers. And super photos were taken. The Blues are moving north, but few are seen this close to Canada. NATOKADN
We pulled into a country church parking lot and could not figure out why a folding chair was in the middle of the parking lot. It appeared a bird was sitting under the chair. The killdeer had made her nest there for several years in a row. We asked this week and the woman there said they had not seen the killdeer this year.
ReplyDelete