Birds

I know I haven't been posting much, but I haven't been doing too much bird-watching. I went down to Montrose Harbor last week after going running, so I didn't spend too much time because I was tired but I did see some interesting birds.

As I was walking through, I didn't really see any birds in the trees, but I saw some somewhat large birds flying away from me that had white rumps. I didn't think too much of it because I thought they were robins. I went on down to the beach and walked out onto this concrete pier that goes out into the lake. I saw a couple of brown birds that looked like cormorants but didn't have the correct coloring. One flew up and perched on this big structure of some kind (probably used to have a light in it) and another flew down and floated on the water. I looked at them for a long, long time then when I got home I was able to identify them as Juvenile Double-Crested Cormorants. So, my first instinct was right. That might be the first time since I've started that that's happened :)

Then I was kind of bummed about not seeing too many birds and I just kind of rested my elbows on this concrete ledge that was chest-level and kind of relaxed. All of a sudden 4 little white and grey birds fly down and land on this ledge about 30 feet from me. I turn to them and look at them through the binoculars and they're just walking along, pecking at the concrete, walking towards me. So I lowered the binoculars and just watched, and darned if one of them didn't walk right up to me! I made a very small sound (oops) and he looked slightly alarmed and walked quickly away. I could have reached out and touched him. He was so cute! So then I watched them as they flew away and saw white stripes on their wings, much like Killdeer and Sandpipers.

On my way back through the hedge, in a clearing I got a good look at those white-rumped birds again and started stalking them around the park. They were large, about 12 inches, and perched both in trees and on the ground. They had SO much going on. Brown head, black beak, black "bib" on their neck, black "moustache", red heart-shaped mark on their nape, black speckling on their body, white rump, and, best of all, when they flew you could see the most beautiful saffron color on their wings, so that it looked striped yellow and black on their wings. They are in the woodpecker family and are called a Northern Flicker. After stalking them a bit, I realized that there were at least six of them and I wasn't the only birder out there checking them out.

Neither of those pictures show the black "moustache". One is red, and one isn't there. From the pictures, it seems that that can differ. Also, the eastern sub-species is the Yellow-Shafted Flicker, and the western is the Red-Shafted Flicker. The ones I saw were yellow.

So, when I went to Oklahoma, I wasn't able to go bird-watching, but I still saw some cool birds. On the way home from the airport I saw at least 3 hawks. One was coming right at me and I thought it had the head and size of a Kestrel, but I wasn't sure. Later that day, Christine and I drove to Target and as we were going down the interstate, which is lined with fields, we saw 2 different hawks exhibiting the same behavior, which was to soar close to the ground in small circles, obviously hunting, and then every once in a while they would flap their wings over one area to stay in the same place. I knew that I had seen this behavior described in one of my books, and when I got home to Chicago I looked it up and it is an extremely common behavior of American Kestrels. I wish I could have seen their coloring, but I couldn't. It's neat. So I'm very confident that those were Kestrels.

So as I was looking in the bird book (yes, I brought my binoculars and bird book to Oklahoma, why do you ask?) I was just pointing out cool birds to Michael and Christine. I showed them a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher and said that I really wanted to see one, but that they weren't up in my area. Well, I looked at the map and they're natural habitat is centered on Oklahoma! Michael and Christine both said they'd seen one. But since I wasn't going to have the chance to go bird-watching I didn't think I'd see one. On Sunday morning, driving to church, I was watching the electrical wires, as is normal for me now, and I saw one!!! I was so excited! Michael thought it was funny. THEN, on the way to the airport, we saw another one. But in that case, I was able to get a better look at it because we were waiting to turn left at a T, and it was right in front of us.

Also in Oklahoma are Great-Tailed Grackles, all over the place. The females and males look different, but they weren't any shyer than the Grackles here :)

And I saw a Blue Jay. I had forgotten how gorgeous their coloring is, and I swear I haven't seen one in the Midwest in years - anyone else?

So, that's all, but they were all pretty cool.