The mystery bird, solved

Ever since moving here to our new home, I've heard the calls of a summer bird. It's a cheerful, chatty call, almost like laughter. For a while, sight unseen, I was calling it a yellow-breasted chat (I don't know why I christened it that except its call was decidedly "chatty"), but then I listened to the actual call of a yellow-breasted chat and realized it most certainly wasn't that. Back to square one. What is the mystery bird?

I mean seriously, this is our fourth summer here and I simply couldn't identify the bird, in large part because while its call was widespread, the bird itself was elusive and evaded all attempts to spot (and hopefully photograph it) for purposes of identification.

Then, a couple weeks ago, this mystery bird began "chatting" from the top of a willow tree in our driveway. I snatched up my camera and crept outside, trying to spot it.

I saw it all right, and took lots of photos. The trouble was, the bird was more or less silhouetted against the sky and I couldn't get into a better position to view it more clearly.

I took dozens of photos (literally, I took 51), just hoping to catch one that would be clear enough to identify the bird. At long last, I was able to catch a flash of bright orange. Aha! That's my clue!

The bird finally flew off to a more distant tree...

...at which point I retired indoors and consulted my bird identification books, looking at all the orange birds in our region.

Then I looked up YouTube videos of the calls for each orange bird. Mystery solved! What I've been hearing is a Bullock's Oriole.

And here's the funny thing: Once I had the bird identified, for the next couple of weeks I could hardly step foot outside without seeing it. Or rather, them. There were at least two males which suddenly started hanging around the yard, resulting in several hastily snatched and not-very-good photos.

After all this time, why did it start hanging around the yard now?

And then, boom. As rapidly as they appeared, they disappeared (from the yard), and now I just heard their chatty, cheery call from afar.

But that's okay. The mystery is solved. Apparently we have a lot of Bullock's Orioles in our area.

The sound of summer

At our last home, we had western meadowlarks everywhere. They were difficult birds to photograph. Because their voice carried a long distance, invariably they were so far away that a photograph showed, at best, a tiny dot. But I loved them. To me, their sweet song was the sound of summer. (How's that for alliteration?) In fact, I consider the song of a meadowlark one of the prettiest bird calls in nature.

Meadowlarks are birds of the grasslands. Apparently this preference is because trees harbor potential predators (hawks), whereas the open fields are safer because birds of prey are easier to spot. At any rate, I absolutely stinkin' love meadowlarks.

So it was with much disappointment to discover, for whatever reason, that meadowlarks don't reside in our current area. It doesn't make much sense, since we have plenty of grassland. Why weren't they here? No idea.

Last summer, once or twice, I heard a meadowlark call, but nothing with the frequency to indicate the bird I heard was anything but an outlier.

But this year ... this year we have meadowlarks! All over the place. Their call is now almost as frequent as at our last home. Once again it's the sound of summer.

A few days ago, a bird's song was so loud that I knew it was close by. I stepped out on our back deck and saw a male perched at the very top of a pine tree, singing his heart out.

I sincerely hope these birds are here to stay.

Vultures

When we lived in California, turkey vultures were very, very common. They're easily distinguished when soaring due to the characteristic "tipping" flight and shallow V-shape position of their wings. (Most raptors have a flat profile when soaring.)

For whatever reason, turkey vultures are a lot less common (and therefore more noticeable) here in Idaho.

So it was with some surprise the other day when we saw a pair of vultures land on a couple of nearby telephone poles, one to each pole. It's actually not that often you see these birds when they're not soaring.

Even more interesting, both birds promptly adopted a horaltic (spread-winged) posture, which they do to warm up.

A magpie kinda half-heartedly tried to harass one of the vultures, but the carrion-eater wasn't overly intimidated. (Vultures aren't a big threat to nestlings of other species.)

After a while, the second vulture joined the first one on the same pole.

Then they both flew off, and that was that.

I like having vultures around. They perform an essential service.

More goshawks

It's something of a privilege to have the quail that congregate around here being hunted by a goshawk (the photo below is a juvenile).

You might remember last year, we had a mystery hawk trying to catch a quail off our back deck.

After consulting with an assistant professor at Washington State University in Pullman, we determined the bird was a juvenile goshawk. (The markings on the tail were the defining feature.)

This was exciting news, at least to me. While goshawks are considered of "least concern" in conservation status, they're not commonly seen ... at least not off our back deck.

This week, the usual explosion of quail and doves away from the feeder and into protective brush made me glance out the window in time to see a flash of predator fly by. I grabbed the camera, but by the time the bird landed, it was perched on top of a distant pole on a neighbor's property.

By cropping and enhancing the photo, even from such a distance, I was able to confirm it was an adult goshawk, with the characteristic facial markings.

Here's a professional photo from Pixabay:

Then yesterday, while Don and I were walking Mr. Darcy, we saw a scattering of fine underfeathers from a dove-gray bird, likely the remains of a ring-necked turtledove that are common around here.

So it seems our local goshawk is eating well. By feeding the birds, I like to think we're doing our part to keep the local goshawk population fed as well.

The harsh reality of life in winter

Older Daughter was working in the kitchen the other day when she glanced out the window just in time to see a bird fall off a tree trunk into the snow.

At first she was inclined to think it was funny – clumsy bird! – but it soon became apparent the bird was stuck in the snow. I donned boots and waded out to free it.

The bird was a red-shafted flicker, and it was indeed stuck in the snow. Or ... something.

Did it have a broken leg? A broken wing? Whatever the issue, it was serious.

I gently picked it up. Within moments, it dropped unconscious.

I brought it onto the porch and laid it on a dishcloth just to keep it off the freezing-cold surface. It died a few minutes later.

It had no apparent injury, so my speculation is it died of starvation. This is the harsh reality of life in winter for many birds, and one of the reasons I like to keep our bird feeder full during the colder months.

Poor little flicker.

Nest-building mode

A western kingbird landed on our deck a few days ago.

While these birds are common, I've never seen one land on our deck. Soon it became apparent he (or she) was in nest-building mode. Notice the white feather in its beak.

What was comical – and I couldn't quite snatch a photo of it – was how strongly the bird was eyeing the tattered outdoor carpet on the deck.

I half expected to see the bird return and try to fray the edges and harvest some threads, but it hasn't returned since. Presumably it found another source of soft fluffy materials to use in its nest.

Ah, spring.

Variations on a theme

One of the most common birds we get at the bird feeder are evening grosbeaks.

They're showy, quarrelsome birds. The males are very handsome in a "tuxedo" sort of way.

They show up by the dozens.

But once in a while we get a variation on the grosbeak theme, and welcome a black-headed grosbeak. They're rare visitors. One showed up the other day when it was gray and rainy, and I grabbed a few pix.

Interestingly, except for the thick finch beak, I find black-headed grosbeaks very similar in pattern and coloration to an east-coast bird, the Baltimore oriel. Go figure.

(Here's a Baltimore oriel.)

At any rate, I enjoyed this little guy until he decided to flutter off to parts unknown.