Phenology -- Birds

[pameladean]

It's fledgling season. The first I knew of it was when I took Ari out earlier this week, and saw a pair of cardinals making their warning chip-chip-chip sound, but not, as is their wont, flying away as we approached. They hung around, clinging to the lower branches of the neighbors' pea-bush hedge and making forays into the tangle of Japanese knotweed at the side of the neighbors' house. I kept the leash short and got Ari interested in the front yard instead.

Yesterday when I took him out he enthroned himself on a pile of paving stones, so I sat on the garden bench and gazed happily at nothing, until the nothing resolved itself into a pair of cardinals with ripe mulberries in their beaks, flying into the huge old mock orange and out again sans mulberries. Eventually I descried a small fluffy chunky brown bird as the recipient of the mulberries. When I finally stood up to urge Ari into the house, I looked up into the mulberry tree above me and saw silhouetted against the sky a classic cardinal shape, crest and all, but fuzzy and chunky. The female cardinal flew by me as I looked and crammed something into the fuzzy cardinal's mouth.

Today when I took Ari out the lawn was full of grackles and starlings, a few adults and a great many not-quite-adult birds, running about and yelling. In the elm tree by the garage, house finches half spotted and half striped were being fed by striped ones. The best thing, perhaps, was what happened when I went in again. I was looking out the library window, which overlooks the roof of the front porch, when a catbird flew onto the roof, hopped into the gutter, and began taking a bath. One after another, three juvenile catbirds followed suit, landing on the roof, hopping into the gutter, and making the same wing and body motions as the adult. The adult bird hopped to the edge of the gutter, shook itself vigorously, flapped its wings, and took off. One after another, the three young ones did the same thing. I didn't laugh until they were all gone, because they are the most skittish of all the birds in the yard. A set of grackles would make nothing of people laughing, but let the catbirds see you out of the corner of their eyes as they forage for mulberries, and they are gone in a flash.

Pamela

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I have to ask, since you mentioned the cardinals—where did the "song of the cardinal" come from in the Secret Land books? It is a short series of chirps, not something incredibly long or lyric.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

We've had some feeding going on fo a few weeks it seems; I haven't been paying too much attention. Mainly the chickadees here. There is a cardinal that still visits but not very often, and I haven't seen many grackles unlike some years when they have claimed the yard.

The daylilies started last week, and one of the Orientals (early, as it's new, and in a pot.) The old roses are about done, Konigen Danemark finishing the season, and a couple of the rebloomers are pausing; but Aloha and Autumn Sunset and Heather Austin have all begun now, and they are all a nice surprise; they looked like they might have been too damaged by the winter. A couple that were, like Abraham Darby, I've been disbudding so that hopefully they won't try to throw all their energy into making flowers. We'll see; but all much better than it looked this Spring.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I was sitting on the front porch last night having a smoke when a motion in the garden caught my eye. It was a Rufous hummingbird, happily feeding at the salvia. She stayed there for several long minutes, hovering at the scarlet blooms.

I do wish we had cardinals here ...

[pameladean]

*shrug* The what-cheer, what-cheer, wheet-wheet-wheet, repeated several times, is plenty lyrical for me. I don't call those chirps, anyway; they are more melodious than that. There's also a longer and more complex variation of those basic sounds that you get in the spring, but I've never found those on a website or informational recording. I have, however, seen the birds doing it.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Plants can be very resilient, if they feel like it.

I did get your email, I just deleted it when I was going after spam in a mindless fashion -- it got tagged as possible spam for some stupid reason.

I'm doing email but I'm WAY WAY BEHIND, is the short answer.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Oh, that's my favorite hummingbird! We don't have them here, we have only ruby-throats.

Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park was alive with hummingbirds, but it wasn't possible for the most part to see what kind they were.

Pamela

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

No worries.. and there's nothing in there that actually _needs_ responding on either *scratches head and pokes sieve-brain* at least not as far as I know.