What kind of bird is this?

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by OneGirlWolfPack

The black bird is funny to watch. He's surprisingly polite.

Surprisingly polite! Opps, maybe I was wrong.

The photo isn't the best for identification purposes. In the phot it certainly looks like a Common Grackle.

There are two other species of Blackbird it could be. The most likely candidate is the Brewer's Blackbird, but it could be a Rusty Blackbird. The two species are hard to tell apart at times.

Both are a bit smaller, both have straighter beaks, both are lass aggressive, and both are more likely to visit a backyard feeder.

All are quiet likely to visit a feeder though. And your bird does seem to have a longer tail (Grackle), a bronze colored back (Grackle), and a larger downturn beak (Grackle).

One or two should not cause problems. However, in my experience one or two will turn into one or two dozen in a few days.

Even the other Blackbirds can overwhelm a backyard feeder.

I enjoy seeing them anyway. And when they do become a problem, I let them empty my feeders and I leave them empty until a week or so after the Blackbirds have moved on.

The other birds will almost always return before long. And you could put out a Suet Cage for the Nuthatch to keep it coming back.

You are down south, putting out some Canola might attract some of the Finch family for you. Especially Goldfinch and Redpoll.

If you have a river valley close by with lots of forest, in the spring, try putting out Oranges cut in half. That will attract Baltimore Oriole.
It is about the only way you are likely to see one. They are secretive birds. but they LOVE Oranges.

Somewhere on here I posted photos of my feeder setup.
If you are interested, I'll see if I can find the link.

It shows the feeders I use for canola. They are made from 2 liter pop bottles.

[OneGirlWolfPack]

If it's not too much trouble, Keg, I would love to see your set up!!

[hal53]

Lethbridge???...forest???...lol u might be out of luck on that one!!!!.....have recently put up a feeder here, not near the activity yet everyone else seems to be getting, just sparrows and those damn Starlings...

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by OneGirlWolfPack

If it's not too much trouble, Keg, I would love to see your set up!!

Glad to do it.

But I couldn't find the thread, I forgot what I called it. LOL

So I have to repost the photos, no problem though, I have them on photobucket already.


In my front yard I have a single post setup for feeding Canola and Suet.



Those are Redpolls on the feeders.




In these photos I only have three pop bottle feeders out and only two filled with Canola, the two further feeders.
Since then I have added two more and fill them all with Canola.

The Redpolls and Pine Grossbeak seem to prefer the Canola over everything else. But I have had Evening Grossbeak and Purple Finch go for the Canola.

In the backyard I have nine or more feeders depending on the time of year and how many birds are visiting.

I hang two from the eves outside our dinning room window. And sometimes I hang two suet feeders with them.




Out in the back yard i have a two pole feeder setup.




The big feeders at the top of the setup are home made, from plastic garbage cans. They hold about a gallon each and the birds empty them in a week or less.




I fill them with Black Oil Sunflower seed.

That seems to be the most popular seed for the widest range of birds.

Here are some of the birds that come to my feeders.

Pine Grossbeak



And photographed from our dinning room table.


Goldfinch




Rose Breasted Grossbeak




Robins, I had a Meal Worm feeder out for a while, but the worms drowned every time it rained. I am presently trying to invent a feeder that they won't drown in.




Common Grackle



Evening Grossbeak


Pine Siskin


And then there are the rare visitors.

Lazuli Bunting


Western Tanager






And of course, a few Baltimore Oriole



Then there are several species of Sparrows, plus, Chickadees, Blackbirds, Redpolls, and several other small birds I simply don't have room to post here.

[mudbug]

I need to download some pictures from my camera, I've got a pair of Purple Finches and a male House finch on it that I should post.
I should send you a couple bird boxes next time I make some )

[marlin1]

cool thread but I can't wrap my head around the mouse thing I've never liked rodents but maybe that's from spending my young years on the fraser valley where we had rats

[mudbug]

Originally Posted by mudbug

I need to download some pictures from my camera, I've got a pair of Purple Finches and a male House finch on it that I should post.
I should send you a couple bird boxes next time I make some )

That's supposed to be a happy face, must have hit a wrong key

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by hal53

Lethbridge???...forest???...lol u might be out of luck on that one!!!!.....have recently put up a feeder here, not near the activity yet everyone else seems to be getting, just sparrows and those damn Starlings...

Give it time hal. It can take a few months for the birds to figure out that your yard is a good place to find food. But once they do, they will come even when your feeder is empty. And they will come back from time to time for months perhaps even years, even if there is not food put out for them.



LOL yeah I guess you wouldn't see a lot of forests down there.

But there must be some trees in the river valleys. Orioles like trees, the more the better.

They have to travel through the area to get to the south and to come north in the spring. They may pass through without stopping but I doubt it.

I'd put out a few Orange halfs in the spring and see if they show up.
It won't cost much and it might be surprising what shows up.

Once the birds start building nest they will stop coming to the oranges so the first couple of weeks after the Redwings show up should be about right.

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by marlin1

cool thread but I can't wrap my head around the mouse thing I've never liked rodents but maybe that's from spending my young years on the fraser valley where we had rats

Deer Mice are almost attractive.

I can understand why people loathe Norway Rats and City mice, They are ugly ugly ugly!!!

But bush mice like the Deer Mouse are rather cute. They look like Mickey or Minnie.

[OneGirlWolfPack]

Okay before I comment on your awesome feeders, I have to once again point out that you said Yellow headed blackbirds are solitary and only like their own kind so the ONE in my yard should leave soon. I now have EIGHT. lmao! I am not even kidding! Eight! Here are the six that greeted me this morning, waiting for me to fill the seeds up.



EIGHT! Their 'song' is horrible and they are all awkward birds. The big scary one has bailed but all these other ones are enjoying my yard like you wouldn't believe. hahaha! They pose for pictures and the small birds seem to like hanging out with them. It's just bizarre. They look like a gang. They stood along the roof of my house just watching me today. It was creepy as all get out! I'm a little nervous that there's going to be a lot more of them tomorrow as their numbers grow by leaps and bounds daily.

I love your feeder set ups!! I especially love that most of them are homemade and don't appear to need to be refilled constantly like mine does. Do you mind if I ask how you made those bottle ones? I'd love to try that with some granola to see what I attract. with my luck there would be a giant hawk on it. Impossible you say? Hang out with me and you'll never say that word again. LOL!

The birds in your yard are beautiful! Ever get anything really bizarre that shouldn't be there?

Marlin, I'm not a fan of rodents either but I do look my one little mouse. He looks more like a hamster than a mouse and he sits down beside me like we've been buddies for ages. lol! Hard to hate that. If there were more or they showed up in my house, that would be a different story.

Thanks for the pictures, Keg!

[OneGirlWolfPack]

Originally Posted by mudbug

I need to download some pictures from my camera, I've got a pair of Purple Finches and a male House finch on it that I should post.
I should send you a couple bird boxes next time I make some )

You should definitely post them!

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by OneGirlWolfPack

Okay before I comment on your awesome feeders, I have to once again point out that you said Yellow headed blackbirds are solitary and only like their own kind so the ONE in my yard should leave soon. I now have EIGHT. lmao! I am not even kidding! Eight! Here are the six that greeted me this morning, waiting for me to fill the seeds up.



EIGHT! Their 'song' is horrible and they are all awkward birds. The big scary one has bailed but all these other ones are enjoying my yard like you wouldn't believe. hahaha! They pose for pictures and the small birds seem to like hanging out with them. It's just bizarre. They look like a gang. They stood along the roof of my house just watching me today. It was creepy as all get out! I'm a little nervous that there's going to be a lot more of them tomorrow as their numbers grow by leaps and bounds daily.

I love your feeder set ups!! I especially love that most of them are homemade and don't appear to need to be refilled constantly like mine does. Do you mind if I ask how you made those bottle ones? I'd love to try that with some granola to see what I attract. with my luck there would be a giant hawk on it. Impossible you say? Hang out with me and you'll never say that word again. LOL!

The birds in your yard are beautiful! Ever get anything really bizarre that shouldn't be there?

Marlin, I'm not a fan of rodents either but I do look my one little mouse. He looks more like a hamster than a mouse and he sits down beside me like we've been buddies for ages. lol! Hard to hate that. If there were more or they showed up in my house, that would be a different story.

Thanks for the pictures, Keg!

I didn't mean to suggest that Yellow Headed Blackbirds are solitary by nature. Like all Blackbirds they prefer to be part of a flock, which is the biggest reason they are not welcome at a lot of feeders.

What i meant to say is they they don't get along well with other species, thus they are seldom seen in the company of other unrelated species.
They will however, sometimes form mixed flocks with other Blackbird species.

I didn't think that this one would find others of it's kind in the area mostly because I though they should be still raising nestlings. But perhaps they are done nesting down there.

At any rate, what is happening is typical Blackbird behavior. More and more every day till they overwhelm.

I guess I made two assumptions that may prove to be off base.
First that they would still be nesting and second that you weren't close to their preferred habitat.
I made the second assumption based on your not knowing what they were. I figured that if they were normally in the area you would have recognized it.

LOL, I should have known better. Birds change their patterns to suit the situation. You may see a dozen this year, or hundreds and they may never return. Or they may return every year from now on.
It's called irruptive behavior. Some birds are very well known for doing it.
Like Pine Siskins and Hawk Owls.

My bottle feeders are simply 2 liter pop bottles with the caps replace by a special bird feeder attachment.

The birds in your yard are beautiful! Ever get anything really bizarre that shouldn't be there?

Nothing bizarre, but some that shouldn't be here, like the Lazuli Bunting.
They are not reported to come this far north. They are a southern bird, like about 700 miles south. 1200 km

I only posted some of the birds that come to our feeders. There are a number of other bird species that visit our yard.
We have both Flickers and Yellow Belied SapSuckers nesting in our yard.

We get a wide verity of ducks in our pond. There are always Flycatchers and Warblers around in the summer. And we have had a pair of Barred Owls who live nearby and visit us from time to time. And twice I've seen Great Gray Owls in our yard.

If I put out the right feed in the right place Snow Buntings will come and have on a couple of occasions.
And I put out a couple of nest boxes that a pair of Tree Swallows have claimed for their own.

Just a guess but I would think that on any given day we would have upwards of 100 birds in the yard comprised of twenty or more species.

I was keeping track of which species I saw on the property and my list, the last time I looked at it, contained over sixty species.

Keep in mind, I live on an acreage more then twenty miles from the nearest town, and I have only one neighbor withing a mile of me.

My property is bordered on one side by thousands of acres of farm fields and on the other side is hundreds of square miles of untouched forests.

If I had a stream nearby and a few patches of mature Conifers, I would be in the perfect spot birds.

[mudbug]

Baby Tree Swallow wanting food on the weekend

[mudbug]

This Red House Finch has been really stubborn about getting caught by the camera so I had to take his picture through the patio window

Same Finch I think and once again taken through a window since he was not a willing camera participant, also one of his mate same day in the spring. He has a really nice song too by the way and sings quite a bit in the yard, That is until you get the camera out

[keep6matt]

Originally Posted by OneGirlWolfPack

I was out doing yard work when I felt like something was watching me. I look up and see this guy on the bird feeder. lol! He looked so awkward in there with his giant feet and beak. He's different than the regular birds. There's something aggressive about him. The way he watched me was odd. His feathers don't have that soft look the other birds have and he clearly didn't belong in a bird feeder. He's pretty interesting to watch though. I know there's a lot of people here who know their stuff when it comes to birds so I'm hoping someone can tell me what he is even though it's a crappy phone picture.

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Hahaha I thought an excerpt from the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem would be appropriate for this situation.

[mudbug]

A few other pics from the weekend

Duck box above the Swallow box, there was 6 ducklings raised in there this spring, sorry I don't have any pictures of them though, this is out at a friends place and they get quite the variety of birds there. All the other pictures were taken at my home

[KegRiver]

Great photos mudbug!

I especially like the tree trunk nesting box.
That is much closer to whet they would use naturally, then what i make for them. I want to try making a few. Maybe this winter.

I find Tree Swallows and Phoebe are the easiest birds to entice into nesting in a persons yard.
We get Flickers and Sapsuckers only because they have nested here since before there was any development here.

There are also Phoebe and at least a couple of species of sparrow that nest in our yard, for the same reason. I'm sure there are others I haven't discovered yet.

I put out nest boxes for chickadee and Goldeneye Ducks. So far those boxes haven't been used.

I also have a box for Barred Owl I will be putting out later this summer and a couple of Kestrel boxes that I'll put out as soon as I can figure out what the best place to out them is.

I made boxes for a couple of my sisters and for a few neighbors. They have had better luck then I have attracting nesting birds. They have better yards for birds.

As far as I know all the swallow boxes I have made are being used. I know that two of my Kestrel boxes have been use at least one year and a couple of my duck boxes have occupants.

If I had the time I would put out a dozen more boxes in my yard and make hundreds more for friends and family.
My biggest problem is time, or lack thereof. Over the last couple of years I worked more weekends then I've had off, and I've worked a lot of long days.
It doesn't leave much time for what I love to do, fishing, photography, birdwatching, visiting friends and family.

And then I went and agreed to become a moderator. Man oh man, I just don't know when enough is enough do I? LOL

[Ticdoc]

Originally Posted by mudbug

This Red House Finch has been really stubborn about getting caught by the camera so I had to take his picture through the patio window

Same Finch I think and once again taken through a window since he was not a willing camera participant, also one of his mate same day in the spring. He has a really nice song too by the way and sings quite a bit in the yard, That is until you get the camera out

Mudbug
I believe your third picture is a female Common Redpoll

all the best
ticdoc

[mudbug]

Originally Posted by Ticdoc

Mudbug
I believe your third picture is a female Common Redpoll

all the best
ticdoc

Hi ticdoc, your right it is a Common Redpoll hen
Those two birds were always together for quite some time under my feeders. Everytime I saw them they were there together and seemed quite "friendly" towards each other

[OneGirlWolfPack]

I love those pics Mudbug! Especially the baby tree swallow.

I seem to have a new problem you guys. I came home for lunch and this guy was in my yard. He flew up to the roof when he saw me. Is this my imagination or is that a freaking hawk??? The magpies keep approaching him on the roof and he screeches at them and they quickly fly away. I have a tiny yard in the city. How am I attracting all these animals? Mice and bunny are gone but now it's skunks and what appears to be a hawk. The murder birds are still around. They screech at me to fill the feeder. That's super fun.

Someone tell me I'm wrong and this isn't a hawk.

[waterninja]

Originally Posted by just_dave

I'm going to stick with the big one being a cow bird.

Just because of the sinister eyeball and beak looking all cray-cray. It's like 'dramatic gopher' but murder bird style.

x2

[375FMNE]

It looks like a Merlin (pigeon hawk)

[Lefty-Canuck]

Originally Posted by 375FMNE

It looks like a Merlin (pigeon hawk)

X2 looks like a Merlin falcon to me too.

LC

[OneGirlWolfPack]

Well that's interesting. So can I train him to deliver my mail?

[schmedlap]

Originally Posted by OneGirlWolfPack

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! I did a search on murder bird (lol..thanks for the name, Dave) and he looks a lot like the yellow headed blackbird.

This is almost identical to what it looks like...only the one in this picture doesn't have the same 'I'll kill your children' look on it's face. Beak looks a bit smaller but maybe it's just the angle of the picture.



The cowbird is similar but not as splotchy and weird looking at this one. Interesting tidbit I learned about the cowbird; they're the deadbeat parents of the bird world. They don't build nests. They lay their eggs in other bird's nests and (usually) bail, leaving the poor sucker who owns the nest to raise their babies. So wrong...and somewhat amusing.

Cowbirds are the Canadian Senators of the bird world (?). They were a huge scourge to the songbird population in the Annapolis Valley of NS back in the '70's. I once dropped 11 out of a huge flock which was densely ensconced in a huge oak tree, with one 7.5 birdshot out of the 12 guage, from the back porch, at about 30-40 yards (meters?). The local crows were very appreciative of the pile of carcasses transferred to the compost heap. The yearly spring battle between the Montgomery cherry trees owners (us) and the cowbirds and starlings generally resulted in a lot of such carnage, but my 11 with one cartridge was definitely the record.

[Gust]

I read this whole thread while listening to this on headphones,, they compliment eachother nicely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB1M2HaEbI4

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by OneGirlWolfPack

Well that's interesting. So can I train him to deliver my mail?

That would be cool, but I doubt it. LOL

I believe they were called Pigeon Hawks because at one time they were thought to hunt pigeons, which they may do occasionally but their primary prey is small birds, like sparrows and Larks.

And I do agree, it does look like Marlin to me. Thechnically they are not a Hawk. Rather they are a Falcon, they are the smaller version of Peregrine Falcon.

At one time Peregrines were called Duck hawks because they do hunt ducks, however the name was changed when it was learned that their preferred prey are birds like Pigeons. Ironic really, one could say they are the true Pigeon Hawk. However, I have photographs I took of one hunting Geese, unsuccessfully I might add.
It is why I wouldn't be surprised if a Merlin hunted Pigeons, but I don't think they would be much more successful then the Peregrine hunting a Goose was.
That is not to say they wouldn't succeed ever. I wouldn't put that past them either.
A couple of years ago I watched a Northern Harrier take a Shoveler Duck.
I wasn't able to capture the hunt on camera but I did capture the Harrier feeding on the duck after it killed it. I think the size ratio is close to the same between a Northern Harrier and a Shoveler Duck compared to a Merlin and a Pigeon.