The Eagle Takes Flight

I lucked into this photo Just happened to spy an eagle in a tree on the farm and had my camera with me. He took flight as I was setting up the camera and I clicked.

The Turkey Buzzard

Turkey buzzards are ugly birds. They are huge, about the size of a turkey, but they eat carrion, not grasses and seeds. They also fly more than turkeys. Turkeys generally only fly up into trees to roost. Turkey buzzards soar on the thermals and can stay aloft for a very long time.

It is also called a turkey vulture. It found in the U.S. and Canada. It is native to this area and not brought in from Europe with the settlers, so it's a North American original.

We consider turkey buzzards good birds because they eat the dead animals along the road. We have also been alerted to dead cattle or a dead calf when we've noticed the turkey buzzards circling overhead.

These birds are unlike black vultures. A black vulture will attack a newborn calf, pecking out its eyes or attacking until it dies. Black vultures also eat eggs of other animals and small critters if they can catch them. We are not fans of black vultures. Black vultures used to be scarce here, but one of the local universities or a government facility (I've never been sure which) was studying them and they got loose. Now the black vultures are everywhere and we see more of them than we do turkey buzzards.

This turkey buzzard apparently was drawn to something stinking in our trash can. They have a heightened sense of smell. He spent several days staring morosely at the trash he could not reach. The smell must have dissipated because he is not hanging around anymore.

Pileated Woodpecker

This pileated woodpecker found another of our dead ash trees and went to work on it. The bird found the beetles and went to town. It made a huge mess at the bottom of the tree.

Birds in the Sky

Friday, when the fellows were cutting trees, I occasionally shot photos of birds flying overhead. I think these are hawks but I'm not positive. They were drafting on the wind currents around the house, having a good ol' time, and when the tree cutting grew boring I'd turn the camera to the birds.

Birds and a Squirrel

Pileated Woodpecker

Robins

Squirrel

Squirrel



Wrens? Brown Thrasher? Not sure.

Birds

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Male cardinal

Female cardinal

Hairy Woodpecker (I think)

Big Birds

Red-Tailed Hawk

Pileated Woodpecker

The Angry Blue Jay

Eagle

Saw this eagle on Friday off Etzler Road:

Photos shot with iPhone SE.

Cardinals

Male Cardinal

Female Cardinal

Male and Female Cardinal

Birds

Starlings

Robins

My grandmother always said the first robins heralded spring. I don't know about that but the yard has been full of them in recent days. Seems a wee bit earlier than usual for migration to me, but I don't track these things on a calendar.

Anyway, I took some photos with my new Nikon B700. Still trying to learn the camera and what it will do.

Bird on the Wing

Poor Baby Bird

I came home the other day and spied a black lump on the patio.

It was a baby bird that had fallen from its nest. The nest, alas, is in my gas BBQ grill.

Incredibly ugly baby bird that pulled at my heart strings anyway.

The bird nest is in the bottom, not in the jar hanging down,
but up in the grill itself, in the burner part.

This is one of the baby bird's parents. I think it's a Carolina Wren.

I took a wide piece of mulch and coaxed the baby bird up on the stick, then, stooping over in a very uncomfortable position, I carried it back to the grill. I even opened the grill, expecting a bird to fly out at me, but the nest was not accessible from there.

I left the little baby as close to the grill as I could. I know next to nothing about song birds and I have no idea if they can somehow lure babies back to nests once they fall out. In my head, I had visions of the parent bird somehow placing the baby on its back and flying it home.

One of the parents showed up after I was inside, and while I ate lunch, I listened to it sing and cry and coax its little one to fly home. The little one attempted to comply, and I could see it lifting its tiny wings and occasionally moving around.

The song bird's trill was excited and anxious, and finally I went into the front of the house where I could not hear it.

When I returned a little later, all was quiet. I could not see the baby bird. I went outside and found that it had somehow flopped itself off the patio and landed upside down. Apparently unable to right itself, it died.

I was sad. The world can always use another songbird.

No sound came from the grill, and I came in and researched the bird to see how many eggs the female would have laid. Apparently, wrens lay about 5-6 eggs. But I'd heard no chirping.

Later, though, I saw the parent bird fly back to the nest with a worm. I opened the back door a crack and I could hear the faintest of little chirps. I felt better knowing the birds had not lost their only little one.

In the meantime, I do not have a BBQ grill to use, but we don't use it that often anyway. This one is 20 years old and I have told my husband that when the birds are through with it, I would prefer he take it to the dump rather than try to clean it out. I am not keen to eat burgers or steak on it after it has been infested with birds and lice and whatever else they may bring with them. The grill is quite old and it looks junky so I don't mind if it goes away.

Nature is cruel because it has no choice. Baby birds die because they fall from nests. That's the way it is.

People have a choice, though. They are not birds. They can pick up a human baby if it falls. Instead, people are just cruel because they want to be.

Human babies die because we choose to withhold care via lack of funding or services. Last year, six out of every 1,000 children under the age of one died in the United States. [CIA World Factbook]

They didn't fall out of a nest. They just didn't receive the care they should have.

Bosnia, Guam, Poland, New Zealand, the European Union, Germany, Ireland, Iceland, and Japan, among others, have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States. In fact, 56 countries have lower infant mortality rates than the United States. Monoco, with less than 2 deaths per 1,000 infants under the age of one, has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world.

And we think we have good health care? Just wait until the vile old white guys in the government finish with it, and you'll see how bad it can be.

How many babies will fall out of the nest then?

How many mothers will sing sad, sorrowful songs?

How many of those songs could be prevented, if we only cared about one another, and not about the dollars in our pocket?

Pilated Wood Peckers

There are two of them in this picture.

Just one in this photo.