ahh, spring

[birder]

This morning was greeted with Violet green swallows twittering and swooping all about the house with Robins and Song sparrows and House finches and Goldfinches singing, finally the northern hemisphere has made it to spring, so wonderful after a record snow year here:)

[cgutzmer]

We have bluebirds all over the place too - glad to see they are making a comeback :)
Chris
p.s. the violet green ones are tree swallows :D

[Gharbad]

Violet-green is a different swallow species Chris ;)

Birds have been alive here for at least 2 weeks, so it's been nice. I see large flocks of Cedar Waxwings daily, for some reason. I don't recall ever seeing them so often.
Other than that, it's just the common locals who you always run into.

[birder]

Cool, do you put out boxes for them? It is amazing to me that such small seemingly fragile animals can travel so many miles to come back to the same spot to nest year after year. One year I had the swallow boxes down and they hovered in front of where the box WAS the previous year!

[Gharbad]

The city puts up swallow boxes around here, but there's several highschools adjacent to that area and they seem to enjoy breaking them.
I think I've only seen a bluebird in this area once or twice in many years.

[cgutzmer]

At the company I work for we have a fairly large bluebird trail (I work on it almost daily during the summer months) we get lots of bluebirds and tree swallows. The tree swallows use the same types of boxes as the bluebirds so its hard to make them just for the bluebirds. Luckily the bluebirds typically get here a couple weeks before the swallows do so it works out well. Also we plan on twice as many boxes to make sure no bluebirds go homeless :) We also get chickadees sometimes.

I thought he was just describing the colors of the swallows :) if there is such a species thats pretty cool! Tree swallows look a super deep purple/blue and when the light hits them they have bright green reflections. Gonna have to google some pics. I have some pics from one of my nest boxes around here somewhere - I will try and dig it up.

[birder]

yep, just a western species, though, but we have trees too, although the ratio is over 10-1 violet greens. They take similar boxes and the tree pair at our house has been perching on the box right in front of the window where they nested last year. We have few house sparrows here, but I chase em off if they try to claim a box, and the holes are too small for starlings, so works out pretty well. Last year had red- breasted nuthatches in one box and chickadees in another

[Gil]

The Morning Doves decided to nest elsewhere this year. They usually nest in the hanging plant baskets just outside our back patio sliding doors. The reason is either the Ravens nesting in the Coast Redwood in the front yard or the Robins who for some reason built their nest on top of the wooden Japanese back porch light which is near the sliding doors. We've name them Cock Robin and Chickadee of course. Attached is last years Morning Doves mother and offspring in watercolor...,

+Gil

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1558/dovesnest07is6.jpg

[cgutzmer]

I like it! Good idea on the water color :) I wish I could get a close visibile nest for the kids but no luck with that so far....
Chris

[SCEtoAUX]

I had one of them "I'll get rid of it sometime" incidents with a box from a piece of electronic gear where it was put on some shelves under a cover and not moved. One day I looked in the box and a wren had built a nest inside it. :)

[birder]

Those house wrens, cute and not too much fear of people, Gil did you paint that? Beautiful.

[Gil]

Thanks for the Up, but no, it's a photo that's been modified using Nikon Capture and Photoshop. I've been messing about in an effort to restore several types of lighting and hue caste to scenes in which they've been lost through the image capture process. It's become its own art form now...,

+Gil