Shameless

Just saw a crow land on our birdfeeder; it was way too big for it, therefore awkward, and quite unable to get a seed from the evenly placed feeding holes. Moreover, something nasty hung from its beak, perhaps the remainder of a worm.

At last it flew away and left me thinking that it was so shamelessly just like a bird.

Most of our bird visitors sit there seemingly proud of their grace and peck at the seeds on offer sharply, accurately, with a kind of swift élan.

Sparrow in Flight

To those challenged by lack of patience we recommend hanging a bird-feeder. Ours made it out there, visible from the dining room, thanks to John Magee’s height and dedication to help feed the avian population during hard times. We’ve learned that by the time you get the camera, the bird sitting on ours will have flown away. To be sure, the first birds that found us were chickadees. They come swiftly, take a seed, and are then immediately back on the big bush to eat it. We decided to be patient. One of these days. Our camera is parked on the dining room table. In due course came cardinals, first the female, then her mate. Then sparrows in numbers. They are quite contentious. Finally even mourning doves showed up; they found that they were too big to eat comfortably at our restaurant, but the sparrows spill seed carelessly enough so the doves too have managed to get some food from the snow below.

The current picture, captured by Brigitte, is thus far the winner for March. It actually captures a sparrow in flight—and two others already feeding. A close look at the photo shows the flyer’s wings, moving to become almost invisible. They are really moving to become even barely perceptible.

Indeed, we didn’t even discover the flying sparrow until I’d put the photo on the machine and cropped it to enlarge the relevant display.

The image of the Chickadee comes from Wikipedia (link). The light conditions, and our little camera, are not up to taking so sharp an image, although we have one or two showing tail feathers and chickadees resting on the bush (the name of which eventually, after I learn it). At this time of year, we get busy preparing for Spring. A rather attractive humming bird bar, a Christmas present, is awaiting to be hung. And on our recent visit to English Gardens we at least fingered a package that promises to draw, with its content, both humming birds and butterflies. We shall see...

Ardea Alba

During our time in the Florida Keys, we amassed more than 1,300 photographs collectively using some eight or nine cameras and at least one unsmart telephone smart enough to take quiet excellent pictures. Monique collected them all and then graciously distributed 4GB flash drives to each group holding all of them—combining thoughtfulness with USB ports. As might be expected, most of these are family photos, but sprinkled among them are shots that show the nature of this tropical setting. Michelle and I, on a morning’s walk, came across one of a Great White Egret (its Latin name my title) having a stroll of its own—or inspecting its property. The bird just went about its business, altogether unperturbed.

After we watched it for a while, a big van drove up with So-and-So Plumbing stenciled on its sides. It turned into this driveway and then came to a stop. The egret at first wouldn’t yield, but it began to walk toward the invisible mansion with the plumbing problem. And only quite a way up the drive did Her Magnificence (if I have the gender right) deign to step aside and let the van proceed.

Nests of All Kinds

They rest, float, hang. They’re scraped, found, dug, hung. They’re formed of pebbles, sticks, living plants, horse-hair, reed, stalks, mud, anything at all. They are often reinforced, wedged between branches, carved out of living cactus plants, and suspended or glued using spider-silk. Most are hidden or carefully camouflaged; in some the bird seals itself in and is fed by its mate through a slit. Some are rudely appropriated from groundhogs—and some the most visible feature of the landscape as you look up—or of the urban skyline in a town, provided of course that its population tolerates birds. More on that in a moment. My subject is Avian Architecture, the title of a new book (June 2011) by Peter Goodfellow, just recently published by Princeton University Press. Brigitte saw a review of it intriguing enough so that we bought a copy then and there. It has given us great pleasure and we recommend it to anyone interested in the natural world—and as Sidney Lanier once put it, in the greatness of God:

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God.
         Sidney Lanier, The Marshes of Glynn

Goodfellow is a retired English Teacher, birdwatcher, and author of other books on birds. Avian Architecture has wonderful pictures but is much more than a coffee-table book. First, it’s short, 160 pages. Then it is organized into twelve chapters—each one about one of the major categories of nests. Goodfellow divides his chapters into an introductory text with illustrations, a spread with “blueprints” that lay out the schematics of the nest-type under discussion. Next comes a spread on materials used and special features. Then follow case studies of different species, in all manner of environments, and how they deploy this type of nest. Fascinating stuff. And, indeed, one cannot help but wonder about the creation of such marvelous ways of hatching eggs and raising chicks.

We grew up in Europe in smaller towns and therefore grew up with stork nests. My first experience of one was in Tirschenreuth, in Germany, where a nest sat on top of Tirschenreuth’s famed church, Mariä Himmelfahrt (Mary’s Assumption). A stork nest was evidently continuously present on that church since the nineteenth century, although not always on the church’s roof. It now has its home on the roof of the vicarage, as shown in the photograph. You may have to click on the photo and then enlarge it to see the nest well. Sometimes humans participate in nest-building too. This particular stork’s nest has a steel platform installed there with some effort, using a fire-engine crane, in 2009, to give the storks (they arrive unfailingly in Spring) a better home.

To show another kind of highly visible nest, the picture on the left shows the suspended nests of the Crested Oropendolas. They are black birds, with blue eyes, yellow beaks, and have a long, vividly yellow tail. Goodfellow classifies such nests under the category of Hanging, Woven, and Stitched Nests and covers them in wondrous detail in Chapter Eight. The one I’m showing is a sub-category called the woven pendulous basket. It is three feet long and seven inches wide at the bottom. You will find a detailed blueprint in the book. The photograph I’m showing, however, comes courtesy of the Trinidad Birding website here.

Conference Tree

A while back, here, in a post on flocks of birds, I mentioned the tree on which they gather. It’s visible from our back yard. The tree died two or three years ago. It is bare all through the spring and summer. Until the city finally gets around to having it removed, the only life it ever sees is in the fall when swarms of birds turn its branches into a living multitude. They swarm, they settle, they take off again. Why do they do it? Is fall the season when, to echo Chaucer, they “longen … to goon on pilgrimages”? A week or so ago, trying to snap some photos of the last moments of a sunset, I glimpsed a relatively young moon in the sky and took its picture too. In that image, we later noticed, I’d also captured an image of the Conference Tree. With the moon at the center of an imaginary clock face, the Conference Tree is at five o’clock.