The photos I posted of the barn swallow family got enough positive reaction that I decided to get some video of the parents taking care of the young’uns. Following is a five-minute video distilled from about a 45 minutes of raw footage. I’ve edited it to focus on the interactions between the adults and the… Continue reading Barn Swallow Feeding Video
Category: Wildlife – Birds
More Nest Peeping: Barn Swallows
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, we decided to let the barn swallows finish building a nest on our front porch, mainly because they picked an innocuous spot and I figured if I ran them off, they’d just find a worse place while we were out of town. The clutch of eggs in… Continue reading More Nest Peeping: Barn Swallows
Quelle Quail? These Quail!
This evening I noticed some shallow disturbances at random between the flagstones on the east side of our back yard, as if something had been digging or scratching. I also heard some rustling noises around the mediterranean fan palm in that vicinity. This looks like a pretty good place for something to hide, doesn’t it? I… Continue reading Quelle Quail? These Quail!
Birding from the comfort of home
The wreath hanging on our front door isn’t really a Christmas wreath. Well, it did start out that way, but when Debbie was unable to find a spring wreath she liked, she hung a few spring-y accessories on it and decided to leave it up for a while. But I suspect a few people in… Continue reading Birding from the comfort of home
Action at the Hummingbird Feeder
I put the video camera on a tripod and trained it on one of the hummingbird feeders on our back porch, and then edited the two-hour recording into the following “best of” video, slowed to 50% to give a better perspective on bird behavior. Think of it as a soothing screen saver – perhaps not… Continue reading Action at the Hummingbird Feeder
Yellow-headed Blackbirds in Midland?
We went for a walk around the neighborhood yesterday afternoon, primarily to check out the new homes under construction. My usual practice is to stick my point-and-shoot camera in my pocket before leaving the house, just in case we encounter something out of the ordinary. I was glad I did. We’ve had multitudes of red-winged… Continue reading Yellow-headed Blackbirds in Midland?
Eggs-it Here
As Bill Engvall says, you might be a redneck if you have Christmas lights up on your porch year-around. That’s an unfair characterization. A lot of people like the looks of little twinkly lights, and I’m of the opinion that you fit the redneck stereotype only if those year-around lights are strung over a Christmas… Continue reading Eggs-it Here
Bird’s Nest Troupe
I suspect that the red oak tree in our front yard will not emerge in full foliage next spring. It’s a multi-trunk tree, and one of the trunks has been devastated by some unknown assailant – borers, oak wilt, dengue fever, black plague, overexposure to Lady Gaga…who knows? We had it treated by a tree… Continue reading Bird’s Nest Troupe
Mocking Bird
I was driving past the south pond this morning and something caught my eye on the far bank. I pulled into the clubhouse parking lot, grabbed the camera (which, for once, actually had a charged battery) and set out across the grounds to get a closer look. Turned out to be this guy: It’s a… Continue reading Mocking Bird
Goose Update
Remember our neighborhood’s one-legged goose? I’m pleased to report that he/she/it appears to have effectively adapted to its unipedal status, as evidenced by this photo taken yesterday evening: The bird at right is the goose in question, and as we watched the trio feeding along the bank, it was doing the one-foot-hop with ease. It’s… Continue reading Goose Update