The Birds and Wildlife Thread

[DragonHeart]

Cause we don't have one, and that is unacceptable.

So, who else here likes nature? Do you have any bird feeders, go to a park just to watch the local furries, etc?

Birds are my main thing. I love watching them at the feeders or hopping around on the lawn and just generally being cute. I even keep a list of all the birds I've seen, just because. Well, partly because I'm a member of a birding forum and they all keep lists, so I thought I should too.

Feel free to post pictures, stories, or even ask questions that we can try to answer. Or trivia, that's always fun.

Anyways, I guess I'll start this off with a few pictures from my trip to the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. (Yes, there are two Squam Lakes.)

Bald Eagles
Red-tailed Hawk
Red Fox

~DragonHeart~

[Chez Daja]

We often get sparrows, blue tits, robins and wood pidgeons in our garden because I always leave out feeders, lard balls and bird houses. This year, we had a litter(?) of blue tits in one of them, you can hear them squeaking and tweeting if you listen carefully.

Cute little thing, but the wood pidgeons are so fat that when they sit on the tree in the middle of our garden, the branches bend, haha.

[Djinn]

Cute little thing, but the wood pidgeons are so fat that when they sit on the tree in the middle of our garden, the branches bend, haha.

So many pigeons have met their end in my garden haha. Lots of cats on the roads around ours and plenty of hawks or falcons. Seen one or two get plucked straight out of the air and slammed on the floor by a peregrine falcon, that was pretty awesome... feathers everywhere . They never learn though, normally stay away for a few days then come back until one of them gets killed again XD.

There's a few red foxes around here aswell, not seen one yet but i've seen plenty of their tracks around the pinewoods near my house. Owls all over the place and loads of bats, hear them all the time when i'm at my friends house since it backs onto a pretty big park.

I love nature, unfortunaly England isn't the best place for wildlife anymore, other than birds (being an island and all). Although i heard they're wanting to reintroduce grey wolves into the scottish highlands, think its because the deer are destroying everything with no natural predators there. I hope they do, that'd be pretty cool

[winterborn86]

When i use to live with my parents we had a little bird house which blue tits use to live in and we had a backbird living in the hedge, i remember standing on a patio chair to look at the eggs, i kinda scared the bird away tho cos i fell into the hedge and it took off and never came back, i felt bloody awful for scaring the bird off, after a few days I tried to take the nest into the house to hatch them my self but my mum caught me an i got a slap lol, the eggs kinda dissapeard after that, i dread to think what happened to them.

I want to get a bird table in the fint garden in my new flad and a bird bath

[Chez Daja]

Djinn, I've had two injured wood pidgeons in my garden.

In fact, one was so sick, that I put it in a big open top plastic box, watered and fed it and cared for it until the RSPCA center down the road would take him.

Poor thing. That was a couple of years back now.

As for cats, we used to get loads, but now we've stuck something on the tops of the fences which stops most of them from getting in. There was a cat sleeping under one of the trees the other day, though. It was only a tiny thing, so I was going to feed it some of the canned tuna we had at the time, but he got frightened and ran off when I opened the door to place the tuna outside.

[Pete]

Let's see. In Queens I've seen more than my fair share of flying rats. I WISH it were legal to just cap them like in GTA4... it'd make my day.

I've also seen my fair share of sparrows. In my grandmothers yard, I always see a Cardinal and a Blue Jay just chillin there. Sometimes they chase each other around; it's pretty funny to watch. There are also crows on one particular tree outside of her house. My grandpa used to caw at them, and they'd caw back haha.

Up in Bing, I've seen hawks, an owl, some woodpeckers, a hummingbird and supposedly an eagle, but I'm not 100% on that.

My housemate had a parakeet last year, but that died in January. Then he got two African Finches, which were cool for the first week, and subsequently annoyed the piss out of me. They died about 2 months after they were born; kinda sad, but I wasn't exactly upset when my 4am alarm clocks stopped going off.

[Furore]

I was doing a trial run for a job interview today and whilst outside in Bulli I came across some friendly rainbow lorikeets.

But yes, Australia does have a ton of animals that are friendly so long as you approach them correctly and not at all if they don't look like they want to be approached. There's pet dogs, cats and several others, there's a few species of birds such as parrots, there's kangaroos and wallabies in some parts...

I'm yet to meet a non-grumpy wombat though...
Small fat little things but they'll go a person if backed into a corner. And then there's tasmanian devils. Half the time they'll go you regardless. Aggressive little bastards... And their bite can crunch through bone...

Kookaburras are fun to watch, yet flee really easily. Usually I see them hanging about on powerlines... I'm yet to see an emu in the wild, but cassowaries can be nasty if encountered. They either flee or attack, never seeming the least bit tame.

Echidnas tend to move slowly or just be lazing around most of the time I've seen them. They're rather cute. Turtles are just as slow and most I've seen were dead due to the heat and them having moved away from water. It does make me feel a little bad for the poor little buggers. Crocodiles seem asleep half the time, but often it's a ruse. If you watch another animal go close, they suddenly spring to life.

There's a few more like Waterdragons, goannas, kingfishers and the like, but chances are I'd be here all night describing them.
And then there's the zoos. They have a ton of other exotic animals. SOOOO MANY.

I just love hanging out with my little animal buddies...

[winterborn86]

I think there is a family of foxes in my area somewhere as i see them running about quite often late at night, three big ones and one little one.
My partner saw em when he was walking home from work one morning (5.30am) and i got a phone call and he was in a panic cos two of the foxes were fighting in the midle of the road and he was scared they were going to go after him, he ended up walking the long way home to avoid them lol. I didnt think a fox would a attack a person tho, would they??

[You]

Well there are the usual animals around where I live, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Finches, Rabbits, Hares, Crows, Pigeons, Badgers etc. But we also get a lot of moose around here. Several times I've seen them in my yard and if you go an hour or two north you reach bear country where you'll find plenty of bears.

^^^^No I dont think foxes would attack a human unless you directly threatened them. If you walked past when they were fighting they would probably break it up and scamper, but I could easily be wrong, I've never been in that situation.

[Chez Daja]

I think there is a family of foxes in my area somewhere as i see them running about quite often late at night, three big ones and one little one.
My partner saw em when he was walking home from work one morning (5.30am) and i got a phone call and he was in a panic cos two of the foxes were fighting in the midle of the road and he was scared they were going to go after him, he ended up walking the long way home to avoid them lol. I didnt think a fox would a attack a person tho, would they??

I believe they will learn to defend themselves more against humans one day, but that day isn't this one. Foxes, despite having become braver over the last decade, are still shy creatures when physically confronted by a human. If you chased a fox, the chances are, it would run away. I have happily driven by foxes at night, and they're fine when confronted with my Aygo, but I think that's because foxes are used to people driving past their habitats. I think they'd be more nervous.

This worries me, though, because they're seemingly not scared enough to run out of the way of speeding cars. You see so many on the road. They're renound for hanging around in the road, so I'm not sure whether they're unafraid of cars, or if they just don't run out of the way fast enough to avoid collision.

[Neo Necron]

I never really got that into wiildlife spotting, though when I do think about it, it does seem interesting. My parents are very much into bird watching, so anyhting I find I know about birds I learn from them. We get a lot of Red Kites in the area (Buckinghamshire, England), and they're slowly starting to fly closer to the ground, by and large. A sign that they're getting used to human population, presumably. Our garden also used to get a lot of frogs/toads which the cat would often bring in. They seem to have disappeared over the past few years, though. Maybe because of the cat, maybe because of inflation of housing prices in the area, I don't know. I think I've seen a fox once or twice too, and there was a badger at one point.

At my house at Uni we get basically nothing, as I'm in a really built up area there, in which pretty much nobody has grass in their gardens. Slugs are the closest thing we get to wildlife.

I used to see a lot of wildlife on my way to college, too. College was out in Henley, so there was quite a drive through some country roads, and country roads = much wildlife. Used to see a few creatures such as pheasants, foxes, occasionally rabbits, and quite often the lesser-spotted road kill.

[Chez Daja]

I get squirrels in my garden a lot. Used to get a few red ones, but now we only usually get grey. Sad. I still like them, though.

Speaking of squirrels, when I was in college, I used to have to walk for a minute or two to get to the gates. One day, I was walking by and I saw this squirrel running off with a toffee crisp in it's mouth, haha. It had the wrapper on it and everything. It made my day.

[Yuki-onna]

I had a video of myself chasing squirrels in the park but it went away. You've got to love the fat little jumpy fuzzy tailed guys. I love wildlife. I get excited everytime I see something new. The other day there was this tiny, yellow bellied tree-clinger guy building a nest...there's a lot of wildlife out here that's new to me.

Foxes, white-tailed deer, badgers*, raccoons, opossums. There's piper-birds in the fields, the usual pigeons, blue jays, canaries, red breasted hummingbirds...there are eagles in the area too but I've yet to see them. There's tons of birds of prey too, owls, hawks. Oh and the redwinged blackbirds, and bright orange orioles, those are a sight. And the bluebirds that are just...very, very blue. I feel like a nerd. I'm always like "WHAT'S THAT??" 'That's a fire hydrant, but the thing next to it, that's a sparrow.' I should try to find a bird book.




*
Accounts from early settlers suggest that badgers once were common in the
northern three-quarters of Illinois. As people settled in Illinois, the badgers' range
was quickly reduced to the northern third of the state. The decline was primarily due
to the fact that the settlers were cultivating the prairies where badgers lived and
were killing badgers because cattle and horses could injure themselves by stepping
in burrows. Badgers nearly disappeared from the state by the late 1800's, but their
population eventually began to recover. By the 1950's they had reclaimed all of their
former range and had even started dipping into southern Illinois.

Badgers are now found throughout Illinois. They're most common in the northern
half of the state and least abundant in the southernmost counties. Some of the
highest populations are found in the sand prairies of northwestern and central
Illinois.

[DragonHeart]

Yesterday we had reports of a black bear roaming around in the general area. That's pretty neat, I've never seen a wild one and they're quite rare in this part of the state. It's much more common for them to be up around the lakes region and the mountains where it's still mostly wild. Would have been cool to see it but I'm glad it didn't come eat my bird feeders. They're squirrel-proof, not bear-proof. Mostly.

Neo: It takes a lot of patience, but birding is a lot of fun. I don't usually go out somewhere specifically to find new birds like a lot of people do, but I enjoy attracting lots of them in the yard.

I also tend to keep track of what I see and my most recent count is around 20 different species, probably at least 50 individuals in all. This is a great time of year with all the youngsters just starting to fledge, as the adults will bring them over and show them how to use the feeders and such. The juveniles are especially fun to watch as they don't have a real good handle on flying yet so occasionally I'll see one lose its grip on a perch and tumble-flutter down to the ground.

I haven't seen any birds of prey in this immediate area though, but I'm sure that's a side effect of having a family of blue jays nesting nearby. They tend to be a good deterrent against things like hawks and crows. I wouldn't want to see any of my birds killed, but it would be neat to see a hawk or something taking a shot at our nuisance squirrels. Got about six of 'em and all they do is eat. We have to feed them to keep them away from the birds' feeders.

~DragonHeart~