In many of my posts I make a big deal out of being an active birder\photographer. Some would say too big a deal. There are times though that I try to wait for the shot. This is the case in this series of one of our neighborhood Barred Owl pair. She and her mate (I […]
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Today’s (April 22, 2021) media will be full, and rightfully so, of proclamations calling for an urgent global response to the climate crisis. As you might suspect, one of my interests in these proclamations of goals and possible solutions is their impact on the impact of climate change on bird populations. Globally and my yard, […]
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The “LoveOwls” were back in our yard. I’m thinking Parent’s Evening Out date.
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I’ve been seeing Brown-headed Cowbirds (BHCO is their four letter code) in our yard. I have mixed thinking about Brown-headed Cowbirds. I’m dismayed on behalf of their victims, but I have to say intrigued by their successful evolutionary survival strategy. BHCOs are brood parasites. They do not build nests. The female lays her eggs, up to […]
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When something is deemed ‘for the birds’ it is being deemed worthless. This post is about how that is not the case for the birds as symbols. It seems that as humans evolved higher-level cognitive capacity, they also evolved a need to explain everything. This wasn’t about vanity I don’t think, but I suppose even […]
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Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers get most of their nutrition from sap which they gather in sap wells that they industriously bore and maintain. Perfectly logical to call them sapsuckers in my opinion. And, since they have a yellow belly also logical to name them Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. All in all, a fitting name for a strikingly marked, industrious […]
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Bluebirds have been symbols of happiness, good health and hope across cultures for ages. Chinese, Europeans, especially the French, Russians, indigenous Americans, and many other peoples have all included bluebirds in uplifting folklore, literature, music and images. Ranging from fairy tales in oral history traditions, to Maurice Maeterlinck’s play “The Bluebird” (one of the works for […]
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For ten months, I have been posting pictures to our neighborhood association’s Listserv of resident and migrating birds visiting our yard. My intentions have been fourfold: 1) To do something, hopefully meaningful, with my new-found free time from sheltering-in-place and moving my office to our front porch and avoiding Atlanta commute time. 2) For neighbors […]
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I haven’t seen a groundhog in our neighborhood, Glennwood Estates, Decatur, Georgia, but we do have our share of chipmunks. So I thought why not a rodent stand-in today. No shadow this morning so we are in for an early spring. This was confirmed by Georgia’s official groundhog winter forecaster, Beau, down in Jackson GA […]
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And I think they are a great choice. Not because they’re colorful. Or, cute. Or, somehow exotic. I think the school children of Georgia, in 1928, followed many years later in 1970 by the legislature, made the right choice because Brown Thrashers are tough, good looking in a rough and ready kind of way, and […]
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