Have You Seen This Bird?

You may have noticed a lot of birds around lately. I sure have. I keep seeing one bird in particular that always brings a smile to my face. I had not seen many of them before, and they seem to be everywhere this year. I see them on the sides of the highway, out on the country roads, in open fields, and flying around all over.

I’ll give you some hints to see if you can guess the bird. This bird likes to sit on fences and power lines. It has a long tail that sticks out. It has orange-salmon patches underneath its wings. Got it yet?

It’s the scissor-tail flycatcher! This is a bird that travels through all of Texas and uses this area as a breeding ground during the summer. They migrate through Mexico and spend the winters in Central America. During the spring, they wander across North America and have been spotted as far north as British Columbia. 

They are a fun bird to watch in flight, because their tail opens and closes like scissors. They are amazing acrobats to watch as they flit around at fast speeds to catch insects and flies. One of their primary food sources are grasshoppers, which is good news for farmers! They nest in taller trees near open areas of grass and prairies. 

Scissor tail flycatchers build their nests using grass, Spanish moss, plastic pieces, paper, string, cigarette butts, pieces of carpet, and almost anything else that they can scavenge from nearby. A study of nests in Texas found that 30% of the nest materials were man-made materials that the birds had gathered.

For more information, visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/scissor-tailed_flycatcher/id

Here are a few videos showing this beautiful bird:

Birds Need Water Even When It is Cold

Like all animals, birds need water to survive. With freezing temperatures many birds in urban areas are finding there regular bird baths and puddles frozen over.  Do to this we see a large increase of birds in our backyard when a "freeze" hits.

This also means we need to change the water more frequently than daily because it will generally ice over during the day and make it difficult for the birds to get a drink.

An alternative is to get an immersion style water heater designed for bird baths which will keep the bird bath water from freezing.  Try to pick one that turns off if the water dries up and make sure you connect it on a ground-fault interrupted circuit to eliminate the risk of electrical shock.  (a ground-fault interrupted circuit is available at most hardware or electrical supply stores).

A homemade solution is to place a light bulb in a flower pot then put the bird bath on top of it.  The warmth of the light bulb should be enough to keep the water from freezing.

8 Simple Tips For Keeping Your Pet Birds Health.

1. Birds need to eat a nutrionally sound diet in order to live a long life. Improper feeding can lead to malnutrition and disease resulting in a shorter lifespan. Start off by feeding your bird right from the beginning.

2. Parrots and birds of the parrot family can eat a variety of different kinds of foods. Seeds should not be a parrot’s only food. This is a mistake many new bird owners make. Seeds contain mostly fat and not enough protein and very few vitamins.

3. Birds can eat most table foods but it is best to stick to healthy items including items containing whole grains, pretzels, and whole wheat pastas and bread. Foods high in fat should be avoided. Never feed them avocados as they are toxic to birds.

6 things that we have to consider before buying a bird

What to start with? First we have to consider the following:What can I afford? How much space will the bird need? Is there any free time for the bird? How noisy is the bird? Will the neighbors murmur?

Releasing Plato (dove we raised) to the outdoors

After 4 weeks of taking care of the baby dove we rescued he started showing strong signs of independence and a desire to join the dove outdoors.  Today was the big day.  Here are some pictures from the videos we will post later

Bird Nesting Season and Your Garden

Here is a great video on how to make peace with your backyard birds during nesting season.

Early Bird Gets The Worm

Robins enjoying our organic backyard with plenty of earthworms coming to the surface after recent rain. It is amazing how these birds, which hunt by sight, find the areas with worms surfacing and come to feed. I think they thought they found paradise with the abundance of earthworms, hackberries and fresh water!

Early morning foraging

Mockingbird and robin observed foraging for food one summer morning. Watch closely and you will see the mockingbird find one of the meal worms I put out frequently :-)

Starling Hides From House Sparrows

Young starling appears to be playing hide and seek from house sparrows. After the young starling finally flies off we get to see a mother sparrow feed its fledgeling with some suet cake.

Mother Grackle Teaching Young Grackle To Drink

You don't see this everyday. A mother grackle has brought her fledgeling to the water bath for the first time to show it how to drink. Notice how the fledgeling keeps demanding food/drink from it's mother and how the mother will demonstrate how to drink then give some drink directly to the fledgeling's mouth.

The next day I noticed the same fledgeling again.  Notice his mother isn't so willing to feed him this time. 

Young starlings and bluejays 7-15-11

One young starling explores the hollow of the stump holding our elevated bird bath and bird feeder, the second is content to drink deeply.  Next is a visit from a couple young bluejays, most likely siblings.  One of the bluejays looks like it would like to eat some of the suet cake but then joins his/her sibing at the water.  Their visit is ended abrubtly, probably by me coming out to check on the camera (doh)

The Early Bluejay gets the freshest suet

I replaced the suet cake in our backyard yesterday and left the bloggie recorder monitoring it from the tripod under the peach tree.  It wasn't long before one of our bluejays discovered it and allowed himself to be filmed on two seperate trips to the cake.  In the clip below I play it at normal speed then again at half speed.  Let me know what you think :-)

Bluejay and woodpecker birds at bird feeder 7-11-11

Observation of morning activities at the elevated bird feeder in our back yard. Visitors include bluejays and woodpecker. 

Then we had some adolescent starling, grackles and dove come join us

Visit my YouTube site for more videos

Hummingbird enjoying fresh food

Hummingbird enjoys the new sugar water so much that he sits on the perch and takes 5 long drinks.  On his third trip back he is disrupted from visiting by the intrusion of a hairy woodpecker who has a sweet tooth.

Robin drinking at birdbath

Robin stopped by for a drink but never cooled off with a bath. 

Bluejay Taking Bath 7-3-11

Finally caught a bluejay on camera while taking a bath.

Cardinal Male Feeding Young

Compared to other birds, male cardinals are very paternal.  In addition to feeding the young, as you see about half way through this video, they also take turns sitting on the eggs.  I guess you might say that is the human equivelent of changing diapers :-)

Mr Blue Jay

Video of Blue Jays eating seed that has fallen on to the lawn from the feeder

Click Here to Learn More about Blue Jays from Cornell Labs