Look what I just found! I don’t know if it’s an Anna’s or an Allen’s hummingbird. The nice thing about this nest location is we can see it through in the window. Incubation period for an Anna’s is 16 days, for an Allen’s 17-22 days. Stay tuned!
Rhea sent me a kookaburra audio clip, which reminded me of the time during lockdown that Dr Farvardin Daliri built a huge kookaburra statue complete with soundtrack, and towed it around Brisbane to make people smile. Sound on!
The bird bath camera continues to bring us surprises. While it’s a little tedious scrolling through the many, many house finch captures, it’s worth it when we see a new arrival. The red-breasted nuthatch is another winter visitor to our region. Like other nuthatches, these move quickly over trunks and branches probing for food in crevices and under flakes of bark. They creep up, down, and sideways without regard for which way is up. Such fun to see this one at the bath.
Seen on the wildlife camera, a new-to-us visitor enjoying a drink and a splash. We are in the winter range of the Hermit Thrush, and very happy to welcome this one to our garden, as they rarely visit backyards. I haven’t heard its lovely, melancholy song, but I’m keeping my ears open.
The Adélie penguin is a truly Antarctic creature—one of only four penguin species to nest on the continent itself. During the breeding season, they need bare, rocky ground on which to build their rough nests of stones. Two eggs are laid; these are incubated for 32 to 34 days by the parents taking turns (shifts typically last for 12 days).
The birds live most of their lives on sea ice, far from land. Adélie penguins living in the Ross Sea region migrate an average of about 13,000 kilometres (8,100 mi) each year as they follow the sun from their breeding colonies to winter foraging grounds and back again.
We are in the winter range of the white-crowned sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys. At various times of the year it is found over nearly all of the North American continent. This deep-bellied, deep-chested, broad-necked sparrow is a very rare vagrant to western Europe. In 2008, one was spotted in Cley next the Sea in Norfolk, England. To commemorate the event, an image of the bird was included in a window at St Margaret’s Church.
Killdeer get their name from one of their most common calls, a shrill, wailing “kill-deer”. They are shorebirds that nest away from water. Like most (all?) plovers, they lay their eggs in a shallow scrape in somewhat exposed areas, even on gravel rooftops. They will deploy a broken-wing display to lead predators away from their nests. However, this doesn’t stop horses or cows from stepping on their eggs. To deter these large hoofed animals, a killdeer will try an “ungulate display”, fluffing itself up, splaying its tail over its head, and running at the beast to attempt to make it change its path. Sadly, this tactic is often fatal for the bird.
We recently saw the return of Yellow-rumped warblers to our yard. They breed in the northern parts of the continent and come south in the non-breeding season.
Males have conspicuous yellow patches on the crown, flank, and rump (the latter giving rise to the nickname “butter butt” among birdwatchers). Their Latin name means “crowned moth-eater”, though they eat plenty of other insect species, as well as spiders.
Happy to see them back!
hashiworks 