Baby Hummingbird

Wow, it's been exactly two years since I last posted to this Blog. What's interesting is I stopped blogging soon after getting a new full-time job and now that I'm no longer at that job -- as of last week -- I'm back blogging. Coincidence?

I wish I could blame it on the job, but that's not a very good excuse. I guess it's because I've been "bird watching" but not "birding". When you don't actively go out and try to find birds, you tend not to find birds. Well that and there has been a lot of changes in my life such as moving, job hunting, new software projects and, best of all, my new girlfriend, whom I've been with for nine months now.

I finally saw a Woodpecker in action for the first time a couple of months ago. I still need to go back to the park and properly identify it.

Earlier tonight I was with my girlfriend at the drive-thru of a fast food place and we noticed what looked like a moth eating flowers, and then we both realized at the same time that it was a baby Hummingbird. It was the first time either one of us have ever noticed seeing a baby Hummingbird. It is quite a sight; it was almost supernatural looking, like a tiny fairy straight out of a fantasy novel.

Red-tailed hawk antics

Yesterday at work a Red-tailed Hawk flew about five feet away from me, at eye level, while in pursuit of some Lesser Goldfinches but it failed to get one. Then it landed on a telephone pole thrirty feet above my head. I tried to get its attention as much as I could by making noises and waving my hands but it completely ignored me. I used to be really still to try not to scare them off but again today the same thing happened and it just stood there no matter what I did; it refused to even look at me but it absolutely had to know I was there. It flew right by my head again in pursuit of prey too.

The community I work in is called "Redhawk" and it definitely a fitting name; there's tons of Red-tailed Hawks there. I also saw a one walking around on the ground trying to get some animal in the bushes. Today I also saw more interesting behavior when a Raven and a Red-tailed Hawk were fighting with each other in the sky. I've seen a Raven doing acrobatics and attacking a Hawk in flight before but this was the first time I've seen a Hawk doing acrobatics (it did a couple rolls) and it fought back. They went at it for a few minutes then flew out of sight.

I also saw a Greater Roadrunner again yesterday. This is only the second time I've seen one and I didn't have my camera on me again! At least this one hung around for a couple of minutes so I could get a good look at it. I first spotted it running across the street with something white in its mouth, which I assume was food it was bringing back to its nest. It ran from bush to bush, knowing I was watching it, and finally made its way onto the hillside shrubs--which is the same environment the last Roadrunner I saw ran into.

Backyard Bird Feeder

As I mentioned in my last Blog post, I recently bought my first Bird Tube Feeder. The first few days after setting it up I had no visitors but about the fifth day into it, tons of birds started showing up. It started with a couple House Finches and Mourning Doves and then some White-crowned Sparrows and California Towhees started showing up. A female Red-winged Blackbird kept showing up and, at first I had no idea what it was, but omething told me took check my field guide for female common birds--since they often throw me off when they look radically different than the males of the same species--and sure enough, it was a female Red-winged Blackbird.

Today the first and only House Sparrow I've seen, since I moved from San Bernardino a few months ago, showed up at the feeder. I'm still not sure why there hasn't been any House Sparrows or European Starlings around here, but I'm definitely not going complain about that! I'll take the many White-crowned, Vesper and Savannah Sparrows that show up all the time, any day.

The birds managed to eat the entire tube-full of bird seed I put in there, all within about two days since they started showing up.

I just bought a seven pound bag of "finch blend" bird seed (designed to attract finch type birds) and it clearly works, since most of the birds that have shown up have been House Finches. It's also attracted California Towhees, which are also finches. I haven't seen any other types of finches at the feeder yet though. I plan to buy another type of bird seed soon to see what other birds I can attract. It's pretty nice having the birds come to me for once.

As a side note, I also saw an American Crow in my backyard eating a Grasshopper today.

Here are some Killdeer photos I took the other day at an elementary school. They were purposely standing under the sprinklers, taking a shower and they let me get closer than they normally tend to:

Costa's Hummingbird

In a recent blog post I stated that I took the Costa's Hummingbird off of my life-list because I determined that I never actually saw one. Well, yesterday I added it back to my life-list because I finally did see one.

Let's rewind a bit first. About a week ago I bought a birdwatching hat and my first tube feeder:


I've had about the two worst hats for birding: a red baseball cap and a white baseball cap. Those colors are terrible for trying to get close to birds. I've never worn any hat but a baseball cap, but I figured I'd try something new, especiall something with more protection from the sun.

This is also my first bird feeder that holds bird seed. It cost about twenty dollars at Lowes. I had a Hummingbird feeder at my last house and I used to just pour bird seed onto the window pane when I lived at one apartment in LA. Anyway, I'll blog more about bird feeding later. So far I haven't had any birds come visit it. At any rate, since I've had no birds show up yet, I started throwing other types of food around the bird feeder to attract birds.

I threw some peanuts, raisins, bread and french fries in the backyard the day before yesterday, and yesterday I noticed an American Crow grabbing french fries with its beak. The interesting thing is that it wasn't eating or flying off with them; It was burying the french fries! As you can see from the image below, we have some loose bark scattered around the non-grassy areas of the backyard. This is where the Crow was burying the french fries. He would pick up one and fly to one spot and bury it, then he'd grab another fry and burry it somewhere else. Each time he buried a french fry he'd sit there for a few seconds and "caw" out and try to remember where he buried it to come back for it later, I guess. This was pretty funny and I had no idea Crows even did this dog-like behavior.


While I was watching the Crow bury french fries, with my binoculars from my bedroom, I noticed a Hummingbird. At first I assumed it was yet another Anna's Hummingbird--but then the sunlight hit it a certain way and I noticed a very brilliant purple color on its head area. I instantly thought "Costa's" but then it was gone.

I wanted to take a picture of it, or at least see it more so I could be 100% sure it was a Costa's Hummingbird. I waited a few minutes but didn't see it and assumed it probably wasn't coming back. So I took the Compact Flash memory card out of my digital camera to plug it into my card-reader, so I could upload the crow pictures to my computer. While I was doing that the Hummingbird came back and perched on a tree about twenty feet away from my bedroom window. "Great," I thought, as I yanked the memory card out of the card-reader and quickly placed it back into my camera. I turned the camera on and started taking pictures, through the glass of my bedroom window, before it flew off. I figured that any pictures would be better than no pictures and, sure enough, it flew off after a few seconds.

After reviewing the pictures inside my camera on its LCD display I was able to determine that it was indeed a Costa's Hummingbird. I was so excited that I got a second chance to see the hummingbird, and take pictures, that I quickly pulled the memory card out of the camera to upload them. The problem was I forgot to turn the camera off before I took the card out. This was the first time I've ever done that and the camera started acting weird and tried to shut itself off. Unfortunately, all the images got erased! All I could do was laugh and hope the bird would somehow come back again.

I must have stared at that tree waiting for the Costa's Hummingbird to come back for at least an hour. I started realizing that this is something I'm going to have to get used to though. I know that most birders don't and can't get pictures of all the birds they see. Finally I gave up and was going to go to the store but the minute I went to leave, the Hummingbird came back and landed on the tree again! I quickly turned my camera on and started taking pictures again, glad that I had a another chance. This time I made sure to turn my camera off before ejecting my memory card. The bird also stuck around long enough to view it with my binoculars and take a really good look at it for a couple minutes.

I ran down stairs to go out to the backyard to try to get a clearer shot of the Costa's Hummingbird and I was only able to take one picture before it flew off--and this time it never returned. The pictures from the bedroom window didn't turn out that well, but they're better than nothing. I love to get pictures of every new type of bird I see. So far, there's only one bird on my list that I didn't get a picture of (yet): the Greater Roadrunner.

What appears to be black on its chin and neck area is actually the purple color, which you can kind of see in the second image in the compilation, if you look hard enough.

Since I began this blog--about 15 months ago--I have been relying soley on flickr.com to host my photos. I finally reached the limit on the free account of 200 images. I was about to pay the $25 (per year) fee to flickr to upgrade to a pro account, but I figured for that much I could get my own hosting. So now is probably a good time to ask, please donate anything you can afford if you like my blog, even a dollar helps. Donating will get your name listed on my thank you page. My PayPal address and my e-mail address are both: rkulla AT gmail DOT com. Thanks.

I recently noticed that Google is now offering a online image service called Picasaweb. They offer over one gigabyte of free storage to start out with, and that will probably increase over time, just like their gmail service. I was able to upload all of my bird photos to it, which is actually only about twelve megabytes worth of images so far. So I probably will never have to worry about image hosting again thanks to Google! You can view all of my bird photos at once (many are not included in blog entries) by going to my picasaweb page.

That's all for now. Here's a few more pictures I took of the Costa's Hummingbird, a Rainbow and a Lesser Goldfinch:

Roadrunner

I saw my first Roadrunner today. A Greater Roadrunner. I was on my break at work and it was standing in the street for a few seconds, at which point I stumbled to get my camera, but all I could do was watch the bird run very quickly all the way across the street and into the bushes, never to be seen again the rest of the day. So, it was both an exciting experience and a slightly dissatisfying experience because it happened so quick (literally the entire sighting lasted maybe 10 seconds) and I have no photos to capture the moment or share. Fortunately, Greater Roadrunners are supposed to be year-round denizens of the area and so I'm confident I'll get more opportunities to see them.

I started thinking about how many types of birds I've now seen that I really wanted to see when I first got into birding, a little over a year ago: Hawks, Owls, Hummingbirds, Roadrunners, Blackbirds, Swallows, Quail, Vultures, and so on. There's still a few general types of birds that I haven't seen that I've really wanted to see. Such as: Woodpeckers and Eagles--and of course there are literally hundreds of species I'd be excited to see; many from other countries.

Seeing this Roadrunner really made my day and I think it has a lot to do with my intention to be a Birder. Someone else saw that Roadrunner today at the same time as me, and they were excited it about it, but only for that 10 seconds. From talking to him afterward, I can tell that it was just a very quick and passing experience and nothing to make a big fuss over. I'm sure that before I had the intention to be a birder it wouldn't have been such a big deal to me either, but I'm just really glad that I have this intention now and it makes me wonder about how else I could enhance my life by having other intentions; At any rate, that's beyond the scope of this Birding Blog so I'll leave it at that.

three new birds

I have three new birds to add to my list, but one to take off. I've decided to take "Costa's Hummingbird" off my list because at the time I labelled it I was very inexperienced and after looking and the pictures, and through more thinking, I realized it was an Anna's Hummingbird. It was the only bird on my list that I never felt one hundred percent sure about, but I felt pretty sure that I had at least identified them by sound at the time. However, it's not my style to put birds on my life-list that I'm not very sure about so I'm taking it off.

I do have three more birds to add to my list though. The first is the Ring-billed Gull:


What's interesting about this bird is that--long before becoming a bird watcher--growing up in Southern California near the beach, I used to see these birds literally every day; yet, since I've moved more inland, I have rarely seen them at all. In fact, since getting into birding I have only seen them a few times, and everytime I've seen them I haven't had my camera on me. I even went down to the local strip mall parking lots on a few occasions to finally get some pictures of them and make a positive ID but they were never there on days I was actively looking for them. Luckily, I bring my camera to work and on Sunday I stopped at the grocery store afterward and saw some.

Indeed, I'm more excited that I finally saw some new sparrows. Yesterday and today I saw some Vesper Sparrows:

[click to enlarge]

And I saw some Savannah Sparrows:


They were pretty tricky to identify at first, but luckily I got some help from the great people on birdforum. I'm fairly confident in distinguishing the two birds now, mostly based on their eyes.

While I was taking pictures of the sparrows in my sister's backyard yesterday, two Turkey Vultures decided to fly overhead for a few seconds, allowing me to get clearer photos than I currently have of them:


Today I was also able to see a Northern Harrier doing it's thing where it hovers in place about thirty feet above the ground (almost like a hummingbird). I didn't have my camera on me but I'm sure I'll see it again because we have a lot of them around. I read that they sometimes go after rabbits and there are a lot of Brush Rabbits around. I wouldn't want to see that though, the rabbits are cute.

I woke up at dawn today to get out to the backyard to bird but no birds were around until 8am. I haven't been waking up very early in a few months and wanted to see if i'd have better luck earlier in the morning, but apparently not. I guess I don't have to feel as guilty about sleeping in now :)

Of further possible interst to other birders, I sent Cornell Lab of Ornithology this e-mail:

For the last few days I haven't been able to access your bird sounds for any birds on http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/ It hasn't worked a single time during any part of the day or night. It used to work fine but now all I get lately when I click the "listen to a song of this species" link is a popup error message:

"Server has reached its capacity and can serve no more streams. Please try again later.
rtsp://132.236.201.103/audio/344a/344a.rm"

Considering how constant this has been, and how it's never happened before, you might be under some for of "Denial of Service" attack and you may want to consult a computer network security expert.

I hope you get this issue resolved soon because I love, and rely on, your web site!

and they replied:

Dear Ryan,
Thanks very much for letting us know about the problem with the sounds at our web site. We are experiencing an unexpected upswing in the number of visitors to our web site. This has resulted in there being more people trying to listen to our sounds at one time than our license allows. We're working hard to remedy this problem as soon as possible, so please check back periodically at the web site.

Anne Hobbs
Public Information Specialist
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
http://www.birds.cornell.edu

Your membership dollars support our Lab programs including our initiatives in protecting the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Won't you consider supporting our feathered friends by becoming a member of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology? You can sign up on line or by phone at 1-800-843-2473.

Bird Fun

When I lived in San Bernardino, California, I used to see House Sparrows, European Starlings and Northern Mocking Birdsevery day, but ever since I moved to two new locations--40 and then 60 miles away--I haven't seen any of those birds; until today! I finally saw a Northern Mockingbird this morning at my sister's house and then again at work, which is the next city over. It was also the hottest day of the year so far, I think. Perhaps this is a sign that Spring is near.

I managed to bird from work again during my break and was able to get my first photos of a Turkey Vulture; Unfortunately, they're not very good. The vultures were circling above very high up (as they do) and I was only able to snap these two shots:

But they're better than nothing.

I thought for sure I'd get better shots because there was carrion on the street near me, but somehow the vultures never seemed to notice it. They flew around for hours and hours close to it, but not directly above it. Although, they might have noticed it and just not wanted to bother with it since there was constant mild traffic on the street. Some Common Ravens noticed it for sure but didn't bother with it.


A few days ago I was able to get some clearer shots of California Quail:


There were about ten Quail all together and, as usual, when they saw me they went running off, but this time they didn't disappear into thin air! I can definitely understand why they're called Quail. They're very funny birds though.

While I was out looking for a new birding spot I came across my first Coyote:

It quickly grew dark, but the spot showed potential, so I'll be back again.

The Great Egret was back near the yard again and this time it seemed to be eating some small frogs and/or lizards; I couldn't quite see what it was but I know we have tons of both around the spot it was hunting. It was probably small frogs. With my binoculars I saw it eat at least three.

My sister Jenelle, got me a game called "Birds of North America 100 Piece Memory Game" which is one of those memory where two or more players have flip cards over and try to remember where they are and later match them up. It's a very fun game that I've been playing with my young nieces and teen sister and I highly recommend it. It includes two cards for each species and shows the name of the birds and has really helped me memorize what these fifty birds look like. So it's not just a fun game, it's educational and great for bird watchers. I didn't think the kids would be too into it but they get really intense with it and we all end up cracking up laughing a lot while playing and, even though they're not that interested in birds, they've learned some things about them just from playing the game.


And for more bird fun I've been listening to some birding Podcasts. I listen to tons of podcasts on various topics and so far have found two birding related ones. One is Ray Brown's Talkin' Birds and the other is called For The Birds, by Laura Erickson, who also has a really good birding Blog. I highly recommend both shows.