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Category: Nature

Weekend Birds and Snake

September 23, 2008 • • 5 Comments

The birds are singing a bit more and thus calling to be found. This mockingbird on one of the neighborhood trails especially so. He let me get pretty close before he took off, leaving me with perhaps my best mocker photo.

On Sunday R and I went to Hornsby Bend. On the river trail, we got a good look (and lousy shot) of this Crested Caracara perched high above the Colorado. We could hear, but not see, Blue Jays screeching at him from the nearby trees.

On the drive out, we had to stop for this Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, taking its time crossing the road.

After 20 years in Texas, this is the very first rattlesnake I’ve actually seen (heard lots of them, though). Strangely enough, the previous weekend, my brother was telling me he had just seen his first ever rattlesnake.

Halfway across the road, it stopped and started rattling. Not wanting to run over it and thus deprive the caracara or one of the many hawks swooping around the area of a tasty meal, I eased the car around it, but not before taking a few pictures.

Hopefully, it will be another 20 years before I see another one.

On the way out, with hawks screeching overhead, I spotted this Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, one of my favorite birds. I took his picture, figuring this might be the last one I would see until April.

Of course, I’ve seen quite a few on the way to work the past few days, but they’ll be heading south soon.

Summer

August 20, 2008 • • 1 Comment

Despite George’s concern, this blog is not gone, to the birds or otherwise. The owner’s just livin’ more in the analog world lately.

I spent a fair amount of time this summer hiking and birding and reacquainting myself with the various trails and walks around Austin. A favorite of mine was Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge, where my dad and I spent a morning exploring and not seeing the Golden-cheeked Warbler or Black-capped Vireo, the birds for whom the NWR exists. It was late in the season, though, and we did get some nice walks.

And, now, school starts up again, and perhaps more regular blogging. And not just about birds either, although this post may go to the birds, specifically these Black-necked Stilts that shot me the stink eye for making them get up off the road at Hornsby Bend last week.

Birds at Hornsby Bend

July 24, 2008 • • 2 Comments

Every summer, I search for new places around Austin to hike and look at birds and other wildlife. This summer, I stumbled upon The Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory, located at the City of Austin’s Biosolids Management Plant/Center for Environmental Research.

It’s right on a bend in the Colorado, and the combination of river and the treatment ponds draws a huge variety of birdlife such as this Black-necked Stilt.

There are trails along the river, and a road that winds around the ponds so you can walk or drive, which can be nice for bird watching since your car can be used as a blind, which is useful for observing more skittish birds like this Snowy Egret.

I’ve visited three times over the past few weeks, and have seen the following birds (*’s by new ones):

  • Northern Cardinal
  • Black vulture
  • Northern Mockingbird
  • Little Blue Heron
  • Barn Swallow
  • Cliff Swallow
  • Great-tailed Grackle
  • Snowy Egret
  • American Coot
  • Spotted Sandpiper *
  • White-eyed Vireo *
  • Killdeer
  • Black-necked Stilt *
  • Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
  • Red-winged Blackbird
  • Brown-headed Cowbird *
  • Mourning Dove
  • Green Heron

In addition to these, I saw a few “mystery ducks” that looked like Blue-winged Teal, but not quite, as well as a bunch of “peeps” (small sandpipers) that I was unable to distinguish, lacking as I do the birding chops to distinguish between the Semi-palmated, Least, and Western Sandpipers. Oh, well, I guess that gives me a reason to go back.

When my Dad and I went last week, we saw huge flocks of Red-wings and Swallows as well as large numbers of Egrets and Little Blues. I can’t wait to see the birds that show up once migration begins.

It’s not all pretty birds, of course. There are pretty spiders like this graden spider also.

The spiders are good as there are very large flocks of gnats, flies and other bugs around those ponds. When we got back in the car to leave, it was like sitting in a plague of insects. But closing the car up in the heat for an hour while we stopped for lunch cooked them pretty well.

Young Mockingbird

July 10, 2008 • • Leave a comment

Last Friday, this little guy showed up in a small tree by the window. I knew he was a baby something, but R saw through that streaked breast right away and called him as a baby mockingbird. A few minutes later one of the adults showed up with a bug and fed it to him before flying away.

The young mocker sat in the bush, trying to stay balanced on the thin branches and chirping for another bug. Eventually, he fluttered over to the neighbor’s shrubs, which are thicker and offer better protection since, according to Kent Rylander’s Behavior of Texas Birds, mockingbirds leave the nest a week or so before they can really fly. The adults feed them and watch over them, chasing away jays, cats, and any other predators that may happen by.

Later, when walking the dogs, I saw the adult singing from a nearby tree while eliciting chirps from several sets of nearby bushes.

That afternoon, we watched as a pair of black-crested titmice led a family of newly-fledged youngsters around the yard, showing them where all the feeders are. I suppose it really was independence day.

Young Grackle Learning to Live

June 27, 2008 • • 3 Comments

Now that I no longer live in south Austin or around campus among the famous grackle trees, I’ve come to appreciate these rather striking iridescent birds.

There are a few that have been nesting in the trees around the house and so every few weeks I get to see the fledglings learn how to be birds as they follow their parents from feeder to tree to birdbath.

Here’s one of the juveniles with his short tail and fuzzy, discombobulated look.

He hops, beak open and wings flapping,  over to one of the adults who has clearly just scored a nice juicy peanut.

Fortunately for junior, the adult bird is feeling generous.

“More!”

The Birds:Twenty Mile High II

June 26, 2008 • • Leave a comment

Last year, on June 22, I rode my bike 20 miles and counted the different birds I saw while zipping along the trails and roads in my little corner of north Austin. I intended to repeat the experiment on the same day a year later, but missed it by a day. So, here’s the birds I spied while riding 20 miles on June 23:

Northern Mockingbird… everywhere

White-winged dove, Mourning dove… poking along trailsides, but no Inca doves this time

Common grackle, Great-tailed grackle… open fields and parking lots

European starling… patrolling the medians

Great egret… hunting in the pond like a snake on a stick

Barn swallow… loads of them by the lake–riding over the dam one paced me about 3 feet above my head, a great look

Scissor-tailed flycatcher… a personal favorite, singing from a signpost

Northen Cardinal… singing from a wire

Hummingbird… most likely black-chinned, but too fast to be sure

Pigeons… flying over the parking lot

Blue jay… hard to miss from the trails and near the houses

House sparrow… waving goodbye from my driveway

Purple Martin… chillin’ on a martin house along one trail

Western Kingbird… perched in treetops on the trail where the Incas were last year

Turkey vulture… circling in the distance

American crow… kaw-kawing from the treetops

Great blue heron… looking like a statue on a pole near the golf course

Green heron… flying through a swarm of mockingbirds and scissor-tails

Swans and Muscovy ducks… feral domestics on the duckponds

This year, I saw 22 birds in 20 miles. Though I didn’t see last year’s Inca doves and snowy egret, I did catch the kingbird, hummingbird, pigeon, and turkey vulture. There are others, but I was moving too fast to really see whatever titmice, chickadees and sparrows might have been lurking in the trees.

In addition to the birds, I saw rabbits, deer, and humans.

Time to Fly

June 11, 2008 • • 4 Comments

A Bewick’s wren hunts in my tomato plants for a bug to bring back to the nest box on the fence post.

Last week, I got to watch the young wrens living out back leave their nest. It takes about 2 weeks for the eggs to hatch and another 2 or so for the nestlings to fledge so I had been keeping track so I wouldn’t miss the show, which came last Monday afternoon.

Each day leading up to flight day, the cheeping in the box grew louder and louder whenever one of the adults showed up with a worm or bug. Last Monday, I noticed that the adults were up in the trees singing and calling louder than usual. Then, I noticed one of the young birds kept poking his head out.

He would sit in the hole and look around at the world, studying it and listening for his parents, sometimes responding, sometimes ducking back into the dark safety of the nest.

Occasionally, he’d get his little feet up onto the lip of the hole and look ready to jump only to back into the nest again. Eventually, he jumped and flew to a nearby tree.

He hopped around in the branches and then flew up to the roof of the neighbor’s house where one of his parents met him, and then they flew off from there. A few minutes later, a second wren poked his head out of the nest and went through the same process.

At one point, one of the adults brought a worm to the nest, went in and then left again with the worm, as if to say, “You want this? Come out and get it.”

By the end of the day, the first 3 (maybe 4, I’m not sure how many there were – 5 at least) had flown and only 2 remained. They flew away early the next morning.

When I cleaned out the nest box, I inspected their nest as I broke it up and scattered it on the ground for other birds to use and was surprised by the amount of dog and cat fur in there. I guess regular brushings of all the beasts is good for the birds too.

Things Seen Outside School on April 2, 2008

April 10, 2008 • • 2 Comments

Morning…

Yellow flower-dandelion-clovers-weeds, speargrass
That rooster crowing by the shed
Small tree-purple flowers
Cars on the highway

Yellow stars on green grass space
Tiny moth flying below the tops of grass-unseen & secret
Lines of trees-leafless, still asleep
Birds chirp and sing, unseen
Dandelions gone to seed
Vulture, distant, glides horizon wind
Pink flowers beyond the ditch, beyond reach
Stands of bluebonnet
Chilly breeze, gray skies, colors fading in the haze
Mockingbird silently flies between two trees

Afternoon…

Wasp buzzing under canopy,
Killdeer flying over ditch
Smoke from behind the trees, campfires in the air
Purple blossom tree

Ant mound pressed against cracked concrete
Ants stream from invisible holes
Airplane cuts gray sky

Buildings through the trees
Donkey brays, rooster crows
Tiny blue flowers in the grass-invisible from six feet up

Crisp on the grass, old leaves-autumn leftovers-punctuate the ground
Burnt leaf smoke carries on the wind
Drills call cadence while a tiny spider climbs a blade of grass

Chipped bark on live oak
Soft moss on the lower trunk, bird’s nest in the branches
Light green, spring leaves sway
Grass, tired and old, hasn’t started growing yet

In the distance a pile of rocks explode with purple flowers, yellow centers
Alone in the field, a daisy, lost in prairie sea

Scissor-tails Return

April 7, 2008 • • Leave a comment

Soaring overhead,
scissor-tails returning
a long journey ends

I love the scissor-tailed flycatcher. So beautiful and elegant with tails forked wide or streaming long and thin behind like signs towed by toy airplanes. What would the sign say? Bugs beware, spring is here.

They’re the state bird of Oklahoma, and can be found on the Oklahoma statehood quarter, released earlier this year.

Fortunately, they can also be found all over central Texas this time of year, soaring over open fields, twisting and diving to come up with a delicious dragonfly. Watching their forked tailed displays is cause to stop the car and stare.

They migrate up from southern Mexico and central America, and then fan out across Texas and Oklahoma. Those journeys are especially amazing to me. What have those little black eyes seen? Seeing the first members of a returning migration is a sight to make one’s day. For a moment, at least, we can know that some things still work, still happen as they should. With their return, Nature’s clock chimes April.

They showed up on April 1st this year.

The return of the
scissor-tailed flycatcher
April has begun