Birds of many feathers

If you've been reading along for a while now, you'll know that I occasionally freak out about birds.

I love birds.

I live in an area where birds are plentiful--from water fowl to hummingbirds and everything in between.

In the past few days I've had a good number of run-ins with birds. They're all short stories, so I thought I'd weave them all together here.

First I have a nuthatch. He perched on my open window. I was literally just on the other side of the screen taking photos of him.

I love how nuthatches have perfect cone-shaped beaks. Also, I love fancy headgear on birds. The crown on this fella looks like it is preened into a mohawk!

We stayed there for awhile--me photographing him; him looking adorable--until he flew off my porch into the lush green beyond my window.

Another morning at home showed me just how bold the geese are becoming.

I've written before about the intrepid geese that make their home in my neighborhood--I jokingly call it the Goose Family Reunion. Each year there seem to be different times at which the group (a gaggle of geese!) decides to migrate a little closer to my house.

This photo is looking off my back porch into my yard. The geese are standing near my very well protected garden. (I have a cylindrical fence that encloses my garden. It goes up and down on a pulley system. Think Mouse Trap, that old board game.)

This poor goose I saw while I was running. My boyfriend warned me about some really sad roadkill: evidently the new construction near the highway made a mess of the wetlands called home by yet another group of geese in my town.

Bf told me a goose got hit. :(

I'm really grateful I didn't find the roadkill. (I would've sobbed the whole run home.)

Canada geese are monogamous. This poor goose just lost the love of his life...

So sad.

On the way to see my career counselor in Pittsburgh, I saw these wild turkeys. They're such big birds that they're hard to miss!

They didn't mind my approach to snap a photo, fortunately. There were more than the photo shows, but the bird next to the tree does a good job of showing its comparative size.

Pittsburgh might be a metropolitan area, but the neighborhoods surrounding it are fairly wooded, and I'm not even talking about the preserved wildlife in the parks we have. I've seen deer in Pittsburgh and, now, turkeys.

Finally, this poor guy was hanging out behind my landlord's business. I took a bag of trash to the dumpster and saw this gigantic bird. I think it's a hawk of some kind.

I was really nervous to continue my trek because I didn't know if the bird was hurt or what.

Later he moved into my neighbors' yard. They were talking about him and I volunteered the phone number for Animal Rescue League. They agreed that they thought it was strange for this guy to be hanging out near humans.

My neighbors' son took him to a vet in a kitty cage to get help. I hope he's okay.

New porch friends

Today a tufted titmouse found my bedroom window particularly comfortable for a perch. We were hardly six inches away from each other, but with my window screen between us. She sang very happy little songs for me till the bird feeder caught her attention again.

I really miss my iPhone sometimes. My iBird app made looking up birds so much easier! *sigh*

Watching Geese Form a V

I peeked out the window when I fed my dog a few minutes ago and saw this:

The encroachment.

This year's gaggle of geese are bolder than before (at least at this time of year...). They've been creeping up into my yard closer to the house, despite my dog leaving her "scent" wherever she pleases.

I decided to go out on the porch to take some pictures. Instead, I got to watch these geese communicate in a way I never noticed before!

Shortly after I stepped out onto the porch (which is about ten feet above level ground), the geese began moving back towards the pond. They didn't like me standing on the porch. I think they associate my presence with my dog... barking at them.

Bird body language? I think so.

I noticed a few geese lifting their heads up at a severe angle--really nodding upwards--at all the other geese. I guessed that they were leaders and that they were saying something to the others.

This next photo is from a different day, but it's a better shot of what I saw the leader geese doing with their heads. Look at the fella on the left.

The goose on the far left is *clearly* calling the shots.

So the geese congregated, as geese are wont to do, and they hurried down towards the pond with their friends and family.

Grouping together near the other geese (and ducks).

I thought that was it. They'd be down by the pond for the night with all the other waterfowls and that was okay by me. But then something else happened...

Whoa! Suddenly all white bellies!

They did a complete about-face and were facing me. I was a little freaked out because I knew that my presence had sent them packing for the evening. Were they going to hiss at me? Fly at me? (Or was I really going too far by inserting myself into the equation?)

The Army couldn't have put together a better battalion.

As quickly as they had turned around they were forming a V. I knew that meant flying, and I was instantly impressed. I had just witnessed bird communication at its finest. These geese had first retreated and then decided to form up to fly! I don't know if you've ever seen geese run, but they can really move it. They weren't running in this case, but you could tell who the slow ones were.

Eat your heart out, Mighty Ducks.

Before I could snap another picture of them shaping up, they were airborne. I was kicking myself for leaving my camera zoomed in. (D'oh.) But you can see that they are in shape and ready to fly in that oh-so-familiar migratory V we see in the sky. Something like this:

Migrating? Probably not. But evolution persists.

Later this year I know I'll be able to count on the Goose Family Reunion, as I have in several past years. My yard usually looks like this:

At last count, there were a bajillion geese at the Goose
Family Reunion. And one white duck.

New neighbor!

Yesterday I had a great reason to be late for work: there was a red-headed woodpecker on my porch!

Rain poured on my house, making his initial hammering sounds seem faint, but when he hammered his little beak into a wooden beam on my porch, I definitely heard him!

I immediately stopped what I was doing and ran to get my camera. I knew he was on my porch. I'm really lucky that my porch is just outside my bedroom window and that it's the same level as my window.

The woodpecker is a little too big for this feeder (usually the biggest birds that fit here are cardinals, bluejays, and nuthatches), but he slid himself under the shield and snacked on some seeds.

This second photo is kind of hilarious because there are other birds--my usual neighbors--trying to fly up into the feeder, only to be greeted by this huge woodpecker. Here you'll see a gathering of a few house finches and a chickadee.

I really enjoyed watching the woodpecker on my porch. The drama that unfolds between the birds that live in my yard is astounding. The summer addition of a red-headed woodpecker should be interesting, provided I keep supplying the food he likes.

Return of the Bloginator

Okay, okay, okay. I am really bad at not having a blog. I'm still not sure I can maintain one with working full time, commuting, and the actual living of life... but I'm going to try. If I have any readers left, I guess I'll find out soon.

So in prior posts I was going on about my nature encounters. I think I'd still like to do that. Since I last posted, I've become obsessed with birds--field guides, binoculars, multiple bird feeders with multiple kinds of feed... and photos of as many birds as I can capture with my iPhone. Of course, I'll have nature encounters that don't include birds, and I plan to post those too. I grew my first garden this year, and it's been a bit crazy to keep up with, but I'm enjoying it. It's like one morning I washed my hands after watering my plants and discovered a green thumb attached to my own hand.

Nature won't be my only topic, though. I recently took up running and I'm quite passionate about it. There's something about the sport that drives me. I hope to make this a little bit of a diary about my running.

Unfortunately, writing about running means that I will also have to include some discussions of my asthma. Yes, what I thought was a childhood pulmonary pest has surfaced again and with vengeance. Currently I haven't run for a week and a half because my asthma has been so bad. I'm being treated, but it's difficult to know if something will work because, as we all know, everyone is different. Oh joy.

I'm Karissa a.k.a. Grammarissa. This is my blog and these are my adventures.

Back-post 4/10/11: dance of the American woodcock

Today my boyfriend and I took a ride around Linn Run State Park. It's a wonderful park. He was scoping out the terrain for a Jeep meet-up, but then we saw a strange little bird. My boyfriend pulled over so we could take a picture and then I took this video of his cute little waddle/walk/dance.

I was giggling quietly the whole time. This little American woodcock looked like it was moving to the beat of music we couldn't hear.

Back-post 5/15/11: attempted rescue

Brandon and Ethel napping
peacefully as I begin
my rescue attempt

Remember the fallen robin's nest?

I watched it to see if mama bird would return. When she didn't, I called the Wildlife Rescue Center to ask what to do. They said to bring in the birds.

I couldn't just let Brandon and Ethel starve.

I got a little box to put the nest in and, using my gardening gloves, carefully placed the nest in the box.

The box wasn't big enough for Brandon, though. As you can see in this second photo, he is attempting to escape while Ethel screeches in confusion.

Ethel shrieks while Brandon attempts to escape
(Note bird mess below where their nest was perched.)

At this point, I didn't really know what to do. I wasn't prepared to deal with a little bird flying (or trying to fly) at me. I knew they were almost fledglings (scraggly little downy feathers and no tail, huge feet), but Brandon was not about to let me put him in a box.

I went inside and tried to collect myself. I had to think about what to do next. When I looked out on the porch, here is what I saw:

"Oh, great," I thought. "He's called in back-up."Brandon, next to the box (clearly dedicated to his cause), an adult robin perched on the porch railing (presumably the mother), and another random bird facing the adult robin on the porch railing.

I put my rescue attempt on hold. I wanted to see how things would progress.

I waited (impatiently) inside, looking out the windows onto my porch every few minutes to monitor the situation. Eventually, Brandon moseyed his way across my porch.

Brandon hopping around on my porch

Then he jumped off the porch.

I shrieked and ran outside to look for him.

I found him, unharmed (thankfully), in the grass behind my house. He hopped away from me as I tried to take his photo.

Once I got a picture of him (clearly at this point I was just out to chronicle the entire ordeal), I scooped him up--still wearing my gardening gloves, mind you--and returned his wiggly little bird self to his nest so he could be with his sister.

Days later, both Ethel and Brandon left the nest. Sometimes I swear that Brandon stops by just to see how I'm doing.

Brandon, the escape artist

Back-post 5/11/11: hummingbird feeder

I always wanted to see if I could coerce a hummingbird to visit my porch. It seems that all it took was the right feeder, a lot of red ribbon, and some (boiled) sweetened water.

I had seen a few of these little guys fluttering around the feeder, but wasn't sure I'd be able to capture a photo. This one is taken through a screen and a window with my tiny little digital camera. Despite the layers of my house in the way, I was delighted with the picture!

And because I love it so much, here is the only other photo I got... I love that their wings are a total blur. I can only imagine how much energy they expend keeping themselves in the air, darting around the way they do.

Back-post, 5/14/11: fallen robin's nest

Meet Brandon and Ethel. They are the baby robins whose nest fell from its perch onto my porch. The nest was reused from a family of robins last year. When it fell, I had no idea what to do. I was very upset because only a week prior I had discovered two dead red-winged blackbirds in my mulch (they had run into one of my front porch windows). And a week before that one of the baby robins from this very nest had fallen/been pushed from the nest.

I was crestfallen to discover their nest upside down on my back porch one day after work. I called a friend who knows a lot about wildlife to ask what I ought to do. She suggested turning over the nest with cardboard and my gardening gloves.

I carefully slid a flattened box underneath the nest and righted it. Staring up at me were these two sweet babies, who I promptly named Brandon and Ethel. Brandon is the one with head peeking out in this photo.

Back-post, 6/8/11: starling in the cupboard

Today, we found a bird under my kitchen sink. What is a bird doing under my sink, you ask? I suspect he came in through a hole (formerly for a pipe?). After some investigation with a flashlight, we determined that the hole leads to the basement. How the bird got into the basement remains a mystery, but the bird was freed shortly after the filming of this video. We attempted to catch him in a box, but he was happy to just fly at my screen door until we opened it. Sadly, this was not captured on film (though I'll forever have the image in my head!).