Red-headed Woodpeckers are striking North American woodpeckers. But their gorgeous looks have not kept them off the Partners In Flight’s Yellow Watch List, the list of species that require constant monitoring and long-term assessment to prevent further declines. In their case, further declines from the current 1%\year or 54% in total since mid-1960s. They are […]
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Large flocks of ‘Fall’ migrating Sandhill Cranes are no longer just using the farm fields of middle GA as a stopover, some are staying for the winter. Historically, eastern Sandhill Cranes fly to the Florida prairies for the winter. One exception is a population that winters near the Okefenokee Swamp & the Grand Bay Wildlife […]
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Different species of birds often stop their territorial bickering and competition to cooperatively forage together and improve one or both species’ success rate. This cooperation can take a variety of forms. For waterbirds it is often commensal, that is, one species benefits and the other neither benefits or is harmed. A common form of commensalism […]
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This post is for OM System OM-1 Mark 1 (OM-1) users. It documents most of my OM-1 settings, particularly for exposure and auto focus, and, in some cases, the rationale for choosing them. My intent is to provide context so that readers can decide if a setting choice aligns with their desired outcomes and\or shooting […]
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Birds do ‘cough’ like we do, but their coughing sounds are very different. We have diaphragms and birds don’t. When we cough, it’s our diaphragm that forces air through our vocal cords producing our deep, loud ‘coughing’ (hacking) sound. We have one larynx (voice box) at the beginning of our windpipes. Birds have a more […]
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Rusty Blackbirds have the steepest population decline of any North American songbird: 85-99% depending on location over the last 40 years. That’s why having them visit our yard is a special treat and a sign that bringing the yard back to a state more closely resembling the piedmont forest that was once here is paying […]
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Speculation Alert I can not find an authoritative source so I’m speculating that Georgia hosts an unusually large number of avian vagrants – birds outside their ‘normal’ ranges – each year and the number is increasing. Though not fully researched, at least by me, I don’t think this is unfounded speculation. How about y’all? Seeing […]
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The first scenes to come to mind for many of us when we read ‘apex predator’ are megafauna hunting across vast expanses (in a documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough) – Lions and Leopards of Africa, Gray Wolves of the Yellowstone Basin, Brown\Grizzly bears of Alaska, or Orcas of the Pacific Northwest coast. Let’s face […]
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,,, or any other native fall-ripening berry plant. In autumn, many species of birds switch from an insect rich diet to including more ‘fruits and vegetables’. For year-round residents and partial, short-haul migrants this switch provides fats, amino acids, and antioxidants that help them recover from molting and prepare for winter. For the long-haul migrants, […]
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It’s mid-September, the heat has finally broke, and Female and immature Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are putting on the last few grams to get them across the Gulf of Mexico. It seems that one criteria for deciding if it is time to go is they can’t see their feet 🙂 As a bonus, this is the time […]
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