Wildlife Sightings (Image heavy)

Arctish · Post by **Arctish** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:02 am

Almost a year ago I started a thread at TR in honor of Earth Day. The purpose was to provide a place for people to post pictures or stories of their recent encounters with wildlife. It turned out to be a lot of fun, especially for the dedicated birders and the photographers. I think it would be fun to have a similar thread here at the Secular Café, so here goes:

Today a flock of Redpolls visited the bird-cherry tree just outside my front door. The tree has been pretty thoroughly picked over these last 5 months but they were still finding a fruit here and there.

Christina · Post by **Christina** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 1:59 pm

I can't remember which of these that I posted where, so sorry if they're all repeats.

Monarch butterflies hang in chains from Eucalyptus trees that grow near a source of milkweed and we have several of those groves here.

There are lots of pelicans down by the coast:

This is a quail. They're all over the place too.

I'll do the rest in another post because I'm not sure how many images we can have in one.

Christina · Post by **Christina** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:06 pm

I'm pretty sure that this guy is just lost.

Caterpillar and Dragonfly:

Elephant Seals:

This is some kind of shore bird:

Christina · Post by **Christina** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:11 pm

I didn't take these myself because there's no way I'm getting that close to a bobcat or mountain lion. There are a lot up here.

Mediancat · Post by **Mediancat** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:24 pm

-- it's not that either one is uncommon, but driving to the library a while back I saw three turkey vultures and a fox having a heated disagreement as to which of them was going to eat from the deer carcass they'd found.

Rob

Ray Moscow · Post by **Ray Moscow** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:33 pm

[quote=""Christina""]
This is some kind of shore bird:

[/quote]

I was going to say a Brewer's blackbird, but the bill is different. Maybe a rusty blackbird?

Where did you see it?

Danhalen · Post by **Danhalen** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:50 pm

[quote=""Ray Moscow""]I was going to say a Brewer's blackbird, but the bill is different. Maybe a rusty blackbird?

Where did you see it?[/quote]I was thinking a starling or grackle.

Ray Moscow · Post by **Ray Moscow** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:52 pm

I thought the bill was wrong for grackles, too, but it sure looks to be a close relation.

Common grackle

The more I look at the Brewer's blackbirdentry, the more I think that's probably it.

Mediancat · Post by **Mediancat** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:56 pm

I thought it was a kind of crow, but it doesn't seem to match any of the US species. If you know what zip code you saw it in, Christina, you can always go to enature.com -- just put in a fake email address when they ask.

Rob

Christina · Post by **Christina** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:19 pm

There are loads of them right down at the coast. It's standing in ice plant which is only a few inches tall if that helps. I've never seen them anywhere else but right by the ocean. They were taken in the same place that the pelicans were, but it didn't look like they flew out to those rocks.

These next picture aren't great because they're so high up in the trees but every October flocks of band-tailed pigeons (I think) come to feast on the madrone berries.

I think that this is a junco:

Thanks Rob - I'll check out that link.

Anne · Post by **Anne** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:19 pm

dragonfly nymph's mouth being opened. I can't believe how big the mouth is...

Hidden Text:

Ray Moscow · Post by **Ray Moscow** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:26 pm

[quote=""Christina""]
I think that this is a junco:

[/quote]

Yes, I think you nailed it. Dark-eyed junco

Christina · Post by **Christina** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:34 pm

[quote=""Ray Moscow""]Yes, I think you nailed it. [/quote]

Yay - for once. We have really loud raucous bluejays too but they're common, and woodpeckers that are too high in the trees to get a good shot of. We either have crows or ravens but I'm not sure which. They're very big and you can hear their wings flapping from a long distance away. They caw. I don't know the difference between the 2. We have lots of hawks and vultures but I don't have any pictures of those either.

I don't know what this one is.

Ray Moscow · Post by **Ray Moscow** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:51 pm

Cowbird, I think. Maybe the brown-headed cowbird?

Oolon Colluphid · Post by **Oolon Colluphid** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:03 pm

Our garden gets hedgehogs, blackbirds, sparrows, pigeons, bluetits and our neighbour's skanky cat.

Well, we did have a brief visit from a green woodpecker, which was the highlight of our wildlife year...

Brianna · Post by **Brianna** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:09 am

I don't have a picture but last summer a moose walked into my camp site up by the lake.

Then we saw a bear and her cub, we were driving in the car and had to break for bear crossing.

Mediancat · Post by **Mediancat** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:26 am

Christina, I was assuming your bird was on the west coast. Am i wrong? Because Rusty blackbird seems to fit, except the range places it not native to any western state.

I would go with Brewer's -- here's a pic of one from the National Zoo's website:

Rob

Christina · Post by **Christina** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:41 am

It does look kind of like that. Here is a side view of it. I'm looking at eNature but there are 291 species in my zip code. You can filter it by family but since I don't know what I'm looking for this could take a while. I'll probably find all the other birds here along the way.

Am I stretching the page on anyone's browser?

Mediancat · Post by **Mediancat** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:52 am

Yeah, but you can filter certain ones out right away: It's not a duck/goose/swan, it's not a raptor, a New World vulture, an owl, or a gull.

Rob

Goldie · Post by **Goldie** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:54 am

We have just about every critter...deer, elk, moose, bear (black, brown and grizzlies)cougar, bobcat, coyotes, wolves, skunks, racoons, porcupines, badgers, weasles, rabbits, hares and all sorts of rodents...bald eagles, owls, osprey, hawks, falcons ravens... all sorts of birds even humming birds...
But we don't have foxes!!! Isn't that WEIRD? No foxes or opossums for that matter. Too much competition?

Christina · Post by **Christina** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:33 am

[quote=""Mediancat""]Yeah, but you can filter certain ones out right away: It's not a duck/goose/swan, it's not a raptor, a New World vulture, an owl, or a gull.

Rob[/quote]

I looked at thumbnails of all of them and I didn't see the one that you mentioned, but I also didn't see a lot of other birds that are commonplace around here. My zip code stretches from the coast, up through coastal valleys through redwood forests and into ponderosa pines with an elevation change from sea level to 2500'. It's probably hard to get all of those ecosystems into a zip code. I'm going to look at the zip codes on the other side of the mountain and the next zip code up the coast.

We have countless deer and coyote too. They're howling all around us at night. When he could still hear my little foofy cocker spaniel would go out on the porch, throw back his head and howl with them. He looked so silly.

Ray Moscow · Post by **Ray Moscow** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 6:04 pm

[quote=""Goldie""]We have just about every critter...deer, elk, moose, bear (black, brown and grizzlies)cougar, bobcat, coyotes, wolves, skunks, racoons, porcupines, badgers, weasles, rabbits, hares and all sorts of rodents...bald eagles, owls, osprey, hawks, falcons ravens... all sorts of birds even humming birds...
But we don't have foxes!!! Isn't that WEIRD? No foxes or opossums for that matter. Too much competition?[/quote]

The bigger predators tend to kill off the smaller ones, so maybe that's why you're not seeing foxes.

Here in the UK, there are no wolves, but foxes are very common.

Mediancat · Post by **Mediancat** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 6:07 pm

Yeah, here in MD the only regular predator larger than a fox is the black bear, and they have better things to do than chase after foxes. And the few coyotes tend to chase the foxes away, not hunt them down and eat them.

So we have a lot of foxes. Gray and red.

Rob

Pendaric · Post by **Pendaric** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 9:12 am

Staff Note

Starfish Discussion split to: here

Brianna · Post by **Brianna** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:17 pm

[quote=""Ray Moscow""]The bigger predators tend to kill off the smaller ones, so maybe that's why you're not seeing foxes.

Here in the UK, there are no wolves, but foxes are very common.[/quote]

Actually foxes are really stealthy. People often don't see them.