Found a walnut at a recent cut and for the heck of it left it on the back steps. Took a couple days but a squirrel did eat it as I found shell fragments.
Our brood doesn't spook or run off unless we have the dog with us. The wife or I can get pretty close as long as we have the coffee can of cracked corn. One of the hens lets us get with in a few feet before she will move away. She's pretty much here everyday, She doesn't have any young. The ones with the youngins we can't get that close(maybe 5 feet) or they squawk or fluff up as a warning. We don't push it, Just spread out the food and back away. Never thought I would ever get this close to a wild bird. But these have been spoiled by humans for many years. We must keep the cracked corn where the original owner must have kept hers too, Because they wait near that door pretty early in the morning. They stretch their necks when you open the door and give the look of "hey its about time"!! Where da heck you been. Luv hearing the babies peep as the peck around at the food. They do their little leaps, jumps and wing flaps which gets pretty comical. I could watch them for hours. When the food is gone the youngins will come pretty close to us while we are sitting in the chairs on the porch. The moms will give them some clucks if they get too close. The lil chits know we will give them more food! But we wait until mom comes over before we do. We know she's the boss lady.
Always love to see them. Very vocal birds. Amazing how deep of a hole they can make. We see and hear the around here on a fairly regular basis. Never at the suet in the cold weather and luckily never pecking on the wood siding.
I didn't have my camera out this morning, But watched a coopers hawk snatch a morning dove right off our feeder. Pretty violent and gross to watch!
Hate to see that myself. Few weeks back out of the corner of my eye I caught some bird of prey swoop down below our feeder. Don't think it got a bird as I didn't see any feathers. Maybe a chipmunk which I wouldn't mind as we're kinda overrun with the cute little critters.
Had two blue jays taken out by hawks here in my yard over the past couple weeks. The first one I watched the takedown and it was an explosion of feathers when it happened. Not the first time I have witnessed that. The second was just a pile of feathers found in the backyard. They also ate a nest full of baby rabbits this spring. I wish they would work a little harder controlling the chipmunk population around here.
Lately we've had 3 males show up. 2 kinda back off but one remembers I bring feed so he'll start moving towards me and if I shake the feed scoop a few times he starts trotting towards me. He lets me get kinda close, the other 2 stay 5-6 feet away. Almost got the friendly one to eat right out of the scoop but he backed off last second. Have had our fountain birdbath out for a month now. Bluebirds and finches use it but the hummingbirds haven't. They'll hover near the spray but don't go down into the basin. Have a lot of rocks in there so they have a shallow area plus the pump came with a fake rock cover so they have places to sit. I read hummingbirds react slowly to changes in their environment but you'd think after a month (and it's close to their feeders) somebody would take a dip. sam
Thats cool. See if you could get some pics. Job I was just working had a flock of turkeys show up in the yard a couple times. Several were half grown poults.
Everyone gets cool pretty birds....I get this. Black faced vulture fledglings came walking out of the barn yesterday. Normally babies are cute...these guys beg to differ
FYI - there's an app out there called Merlin. It'll identify any bird song within listening range of your phone's microphone. Using it, it identified the hawk as being a broad-winged hawk.
Hummingbirds going nuts around here today. Activity had slowed down recently but today have had around 6-8 hitting the 2 feeders all day. Darting around, diving at the others trying to keep them away from the feeders like they want them for themselves. Put out the 2 feeders yesterday, fully filled up, each was still about full this morning but currently they are about empty. Usually they start to migrate south in late August from what I read but maybe they're getting ready early. sam
Wanted to correct this as I did some reading. These are actually turkey buzzards. When they're young they have black heads. They meandered around today and ended up in another outbuilding I didn't want them in so me and the kids went out and herded them back to the other barn. At one point one of them vomited up whatever it had been fed .....I gagged for 15 minutes which the kids thought was hilarious. Haha
I took your original comment to be a description of what he currently looks like as to a name and just assumed it was a turkey vulture. I assumed that we only had the Turkey Vulture - but you made me look them up and learn something this morning. We have 3 vultures in the USA (of which you have named 2). Oh, and I already knew of the California Condor but it didn't enter my mind since it is well, California (LOL).
