MagiStream

We've had our feeders out most of the winter since we're on the major migration routes. I have a tube feeder for small birds, a wildlife block for turkeys and quail, a large square feeder for cadinals and jays, and two suet blocks (one formulated for creepers and wrens, the other for woodpeckers). When the first hummingbird appeared, we set out their feeder (homemade nectar recipe, no coloring).

We had:

- American goldfinches
- white eyed vireo
- ruby crowned kinglet
- chipping sparrow
- savannah sparrow
- swamp sparrow
- yellow throated vireo
- prothonatory warbler
- Audobon's warbler (incidental to the area, doesn't usually live here)
- eastern towhee
- pine warbler
- bobwhite quail
- turkey
- mourning dove
- ground dove
- ruby throated humming bird
- black chinned humming bird (incidental)
- blue jay (nesting pair and they decided to stay!)
- Florida scrub jay
- crow (we have a small murder of about seven interrelated birds)
- Carolina Chickadee
- Carolina wren
- grey catbird
- yellow rumped warbler
- prairie warbler
- white crowned sparrow
- Northern cardinal (several pairs)
- brown headed cowbird

The bigger feeder is a mix of black and white sunflower seeds, cracked corn, millet, and raw peanuts. The tube feeder has millet, thistle, and black sunflower seeds. The wildlife block has all kinds of bird appropriate feed plus molasses and suet.

The suet cakes attracted wrens, brown creeper, red bellied woodpecker, piliated woodpecker, and my beloved Ivory bills.

You just have to keep trying, maybe moving things around, until you get takers. Once they find the food, which can take several weeks, they remember and if they're nonmigratory they'll stay. Our jays and crows know us on sight. So do the hummingbirds, which will sometimes land in my hair when I sit on the deck. The cardinal pair --- the main one --- lives in the saw palmetto just off my porch. They like to flutter at the window and look inside to see what we are doing. When we had to close up as it got hotter they perched in the oak and screeched at us for hours.

Well, just saw a Cardinal pair stop by the feeder, I guess they must live nearby.

Also, I have made a few observations about the Grackles we get(aside from there being a lot of them, that they eat a lot and having a hell of a time differentiating males from females).
-Males preform for the females, and are quite vocal. They sit around and, often in turn, fluff out their feathers/wings and make this harsh screeching noise. It is not pleasant to wake up to in the morning when there is a flock of them in your yard/tree.
-They form pairs. I saw interaction with this. The first, a male was fluffing and screeching and a smaller one(I assume it was a female, the bird book says they're duller and have smaller and that is all it gives, which doesn't help) chirped back to him several times in a very sweet sounding chirp. The two of them proceeded to fly off together.
The second was literally just now. A pair flew down to the feeder together and were feeding. A third bird decided to drop in, at which point the female(the duller of the original pair) chattered at him before hopping to the ground. Shortly after, she took off followed by the male she'd flown in with.

On the note of animals and mating calls, we went for a hike down to 'Dead End' and the Sports Field, which is home to frogs and lots of them. At one point we heard what sounded like a noise somewhere between a duck's quack and a cat's meow coming from a marshy/pond section. Lots of calls, but no animals to be seen. Eventually we did notice little frogs way out int he water, but couldn't tell what kind.
After some research at home I deduced what we heard was the mating call of a male Wood Frog. Which makes my dad's comment of 'I think we walked into a frog orgy' even funnier.

Hey Tx, if your feeders are drawing in Ivory Bills, do you think you might be able to snag a photo while they feed? I know you've said they're nervous and fly off quickly, but it seems like a better chance than just catching them knocking on a tree.

Also, what's your nectar recipe?

I went over to Boise for Easter, and on the way home, I took a slightly more scenic route on Hwy 20 (rather than 84 all the way down to Twin Falls)

I got to see SO MUCH wildlife!

I saw several bands on pronghorn antelope
a number of mule deer
4 elk!
a couple of yellow-bellied marmots (aka Rockchucks)
mallards
mergansers
cormorants
some kind of large shorebird
SNIPE! Yes, they do exist, and are often seen in farmer's fields, out in the desert and along waterways here in Idaho.
a bukkitton of red-winged and brewers blackbirds, and a couple of yellow-headed blackbirds too!
Several swallows, but I was moving, and they were moving too fast for a positive ID on species.
I got to see a bunch of Swainsons and Red-tailed hawks. One Reddy I think was even feeding chicks in the nest! If not, s/he was turning eggs. I saw a Swainsons sitting on prey near the side of the road, though I couldn't tell what he'd caught.
I saw several harriers, all males.
Then, sitting in a short, snaggy tree, I saw a golden eagle! In the time it took me to pass him and look at the other side of the road, I saw a bald eagle sitting on the ground! Then, I saw a couple more goldens along the drive.
I got to see a pair of flying sandhill cranes, and then later, three in a field.
I saw a number of meadow larks
And of course, plenty of "indeterminate little birds", lol.

I also found something rather disturbing. There's a pull off, although I think it may mostly be a snow plow turn around, but people seem to use it for a trash dump site. Down the hillside a little ways I found the remains of no less than 3 canids. One was much older than the other two, being little more than a scattering of bleached white ribs, vertebrae and 1 shoulder blade and leg bone. I figure it was canid because of the similar size to the other two, which were definitely canid.
The other two were mostly skeletonized, but had fur on their lower legs and feet, and some mummified flesh on their skulls and necks - YUCK. One, I am quite certain was a coyote. Dark reddish brown legs, the size, much too big to be fox, much too small to be wolf, much flatter head than most domestic dogs, small, sharp claws, dainty feet. The other was about half the size of the coyote, and had lighter brown legs, but appeared to have all adult teeth. So, it might have been a coyote pup, but the teeth confuse me then. But the light tan leg fur confuses me for fox, every natural morph I've seen has black on the lower legs.
I was actually tempted to collect the skulls, but they had more flesh on them than I really wanted to work at removing, and several of the teeth on each were damaged.
I figure they were either hit and killed and got scooped up with snow removal (which might also explain a lot of the garbage on the hillside), or they were shot and dumped by farmers or assholes.


No activity in the bird house I put up. I may have waited too long. *sad*

I did just bring home my old double yard hook for hanging more feeders, and my old bird bath, so those will be going up soon. I know I want to hang a humming bird feeder, but I haven't decided yet what to put on the second hook. I have a mixed seed tube, a gazebo type with sunflower, so I'm thinking maybe either a barn style or platform with mixed, or a niger sock

Saw the Cowbirds at the feeder again yesterday, and there was actually a female this time. So there was at least one pair. And Mr. Cardinal stopped by again for a short time-he really stands out among all the empty tree branches though xD He's jsut this bright red spot among all the browns and greys.

A drive outside the city, or even near the arboretum and you're bound to see at least one Turkey Vulture soaring overhead, the shallow V of the wings and circular gliding 'fingers' of the feathers gives it away. Plus it's to large to be a hawk and the head to small(and not white) to be an eagle.

The spiders living in our house have decided to start coming out Rescued one from the bathtub last night(the way my mother was going I thought it was going to be a massive one, turned out to be quite small) and spotted no less than three crawling along the top of the living room wall above the tv. Unfortunately it's to high for us to reach-they tend to stick right near/on the ceiling them and they only seem to come out during the night, so they haven't been evicted yet. I supposed we could have worse house guests though.

On Saturday me and my family drove down to Hells canyon, we saw a few interesting things =D

For one I saw a weasel of some sort of the way there, we also drove past a dead deer with some vultures hanging around. Then after a while we pulled over when we spotted this guy =3 A bit further down we saw this, honestly we're not entirely sure if it's a young bald eagle or a young golden eagle 'w'

When we reached the area we decided to have lunch at, we saw a bunch of swallows, some Violet-greens and some Tree swallows

There were also a bunch of butterflies, the ones I got pictures of were swallowtails at the picnic spot and a mourning cloak around the Hells canyon visitor center, The ones around where we had lunch were getting a drink down by the river, I think And this guy was just hanging around

It was the mountain goat that made my moms day, though X3 I also think I saw a beaver on the way home...

And I don't suppose anyone here is able to identify these?
They look like skulls to me, but of what, I don't know
They've been hanging off that telephone pole at least since me and my family moved here (which would be, I dunno, 7 1/2 years or so) and I've always wondered what they were 'w'

Uhm, m-may I join?

I really love bird watching, although my lifestyle prevents me from actively going out and searching for birds. My favorite bird of all time is maybe a mockingbird, but it could also be the mourning dove. I love mockingbirds because of their beautiful songs and the way they flash white on their wings when they fly. I love mourning doves partly because one was my spark bird to start watching birds, and partly because I find the noise their wings make when they fly amusing. a few years ago, when I lived in a different part of the US, a mourning dove would waddle up to my back porch and coo away at me through the glass. One time, I opened up the sliding door and threw some spare bird feed onto the cobblestones. The little guy just ate it right up, without regard for the human me not even a foot away. It definitely encouraged me a lot to start bird watching.

*waves to Fawnfur* Hello, fellow Idahoan! (or at least visitor to Idaho, lol)
Your baby eagle looks to be a young bald to me. Goldens are more white on the undersides of the wings, less all over the body like that. Also, goldens are booted eagles, so the feathers should come down all the way to where the toes splay out, but I think I see yellow legs, indicating that guy is a baldy born last year.

SOOOO jealous of your mountain goat sighting. I've never seen one. I've seen two wild bighorn sheep, but that was in Yellowstone.

I believe your white things on a post are skulls. Snake skulls to be exact. Someone's killing snakes and hanging them up there. YUCK. Poor snakes. They don't even look to be venomous, like rattlers.
http://museum2.utep.edu/archive/reptile ... lbones.htm non-venomous, looks almost identical to your mystery objects
http://paolov.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/pict0083.jpg - dorsal view of a rattlesnake head - quite different.

Meaning your mystery heads are likely from non-venomous, friendly, helpful gopher snakes. Hopefully whoever did it stopped.

*Waves back* Hi! =D
Yeah, when we first saw it my aunt thought for sure it was a golden, but after comparing pictures in a book we thought it was a young bald, still, we weren't 100% sure, so thanks =D

My mom sure was excited when she spotted it X3 It's the first wild mountain goat I've seen myself, we did see some bighorn sheep in Yellowstone as well, it was surprising since our tour guide didn't think we'd see any from the road =D

Snake skulls huh? I certainly wouldn't have guessed that xD I would have expected them to be much smaller 'w' They've been there for some time and as far as I can tell, no new ones have been added :3

I could be wrong about the skulls being from a snake... turtle maybe?

Would it be possible for you to put your hand, or a quarter (or a banana, if this were Reddit, lol) in another photo with the post for reference? Also, maybe bravely take one off and photograph it some multiple angles.


Guess who saw a peregrine falcon today? ^^
I honestly thought it was a Swainson's Hawk at first. Dark back, lighter belly, dark head. Then I realized it was too small. Then I realized it was falcon shaped, and holding its wings out flat when it wasn't flapping. My next thought was prairie falcon, because they're more common, but that black head was a dead give away. It was the 'helmet' on a peregrine!

He was flying slowly over some parking lots. I think he was probably hunting for sparrows. The Snake River Canyon was just a quarter mile away, too.

Well not as exciting as seeing a peregrine, but we have a blackbird nesting in the pony's stable. Silly thing has chosen right behind the door post and directly above where we usually put the water bucket, so that will have to move. Currently she's sitting on 5 eggs. I hope we don't scare her enough with going into the stable to make her abandon them. Anyone know how long its likely to be before they begin hatching?