Day 1,128
The view from my porch
I am a pandemic birder. Or possibly even a pre-pandemic birder, since I started birding while I was recovering from back surgery in 2019. The pandemic started just as I was getting better.
I’ve always liked watching and photographing birds, but I never really kept track of what I saw. In the past few years, though, I’ve learned about eBird, FeederWatch, iNaturalist, Nature’s Notebook, and many other community science projects. eBird is by far my largest ongoing project, and today marks my 1,128th consecutive day of submitting observation checklists. Most of them from my back porch.
Most of the houses in our suburban neighborhood are close together, but we’re lucky enough to have a a creek (really, a drainage canal) on one side and around the back. There’s a wooded area on both sides of the canal with mature oak, pine and sweetgum trees that make it an excellent bird habitat, with 108 different species counted so far. I think I’ll miss this most of all when we move.
Today, I decided to take a break from all the packing, moving and yard sale stress and spend a few hours just sitting outside. I had seen an indigo bunting at our feeder yesterday, and I wanted to get a photo. I never did get the photo I wanted, but here’s some other things I saw.
Here are two brown-headed cowbirds (another of the lighter brown ones was just out of frame). My first thought was that was a family: an adult male, a female and a juvenile. But then I remember that brown-headed cowbirds are brood parasites — they will lay their eggs in the nests of other species, and that other species will do the incubation and parental care. So it is more likely that this is a male and two females or unrelated juveniles.
I love the sound they make — it’s a “glug glug” call that sounds like water dripping.
Here are two blue jays engaged in courtship feeding. The male often feeds the female prior to nesting, and they may exchange twigs or even “kiss” (courtship feeding without actual food). Blue jays are monogamous and often mate for life.
We almost always have a dozen or so red-winged blackbirds at our feeders lately, and it’s almost always exclusively females. It’s rare that we’ll see a male red-winged blackbird here. However, they are one of the most polygynous species of birds, with up to 15 females nesting in the territory of a single male.
Another monogamous species, these red-bellied woodpeckers have been digging out nest cavities in the trees behind our house. Here you can see the red on the male covers the nape, crown and forehead, while the female only has red on the nape.
Yet another monogamous species is the tufted titmouse. I love these little guys, and I’m not sure why. They just make me happy.
Tufted Titmice and chickadees are ‘nuclear' species, often joined in winter flocks by a variety of ‘satellite' species. As a ‘nuclear' species, titmice influence the paths that flocks follow, are aggressive mobbers of potential predators, and often take the lead during mobbing events. The calls that titmice utter when mobbing provide a warning about the presence of predators for not only other titmice, but all the other species that are in the flock.
Some more regular visitors:
And some of the non-avian wildlife from today:
Also seen but not photographed today: indigo bunting1, blue-tailed skink, a very fast but unidentified butterfly, and a bumblebee feeding in the blueberry.
This is a great backyard for wildlife watching, and we’ve let it grow wild for just that purpose. While I’ll miss this place, I suspect that I’ll find plenty to watch on the ranch.
I have a max-zoom cell phone photo that I refuse to post on here.
Your photos are lovely!
You write so beautifully! I am looking forward to getting your autograph on “Views from my Oklahoma Porch” in a few years!