"birding" fun

[Don Boose]

I love mockingbirds, and we have a lot of them here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. But they can be aggressive. During my morning walk I watched a mockingbird chasing a crow across the treetops.

Don

[redhorse]

I just saw a first for me this evening. We went up to Eisenhower State Park and I saw my first roadrunner. He was in the camping area and very tame, got about 10 feet from him.

[birder]

Way cool bird to see!! Were there any colors visable behind the eye? What a unique bird.
Shrike- I love burrowing owls, but have to travel a hundred miles south to find them, used to see them in so cal.

[redhorse]

I've got a burrowing owl picture on one of my calendars, that would really cool to see in real life.

I honestly don't remember if the roadrunner had any color behind his eyes, I was too surprised to see the little guy walking across the road in front of my car!

[Gharbad]

The other day I went hiking the Niagara Escarptment near here, which has some 100m or so cliffs. While we were standing at a good lookout point, 5 or 6 flew right in our face, maybe 10m away. You could see their eyes while they were chasing each other and just having fun or whatever they do. For the next 20 minutes or so you could see them occasionally, still just going around.

[Ashrunner]

There are a number of Burrowing Owl spots east of me. I've gone out their way maybe six times to get shots of them and never seen one. Hopefully, sometime in July, I'll be heading out again. Maybe it will be a lucky seventh time.

[dansls1]

Had an interesting sighting this week - a male rose-breasted Grosbeak. My mom's neighbor had described it to my mom earlier this year asking what it was, and we have been seeing what we were pretty sure was the female around my mom's coy pond a few times - but we finally saw the male out the other evening.

[birder]

One of the prettiest birds in the US Dan! Way to go! They don't make it (normally) over the Rockies, but the western counterpart is similar to it in many ways, size, habits, and song, and the females are nearly identical, showing again how closely related they are (hybrids with the Black Headed grosbeak occurr also to show this in the few areas of overlap in range).

[Darwin]

The little hawk in the tree next door has finally reached the fledgling stage....it was out and flying about today. I think the little yellow guy in the lower left of the photo is a female Western Tanager, but the black throat doesn't quite match the description in my reference. It's too big to be a finch or canary variety. What isn't apparent from the photo is that the little one is panting its lungs out from divebombing the hawk trying to get it out of Dodge. A few seconds after the photo, it got its second wind and managed to at least get the hawk to move to the other side of the tree.

[Ashrunner]

Originally Posted by Darwin

I think the little yellow guy in the lower left of the photo is a female Western Tanager, but the black throat doesn't quite match the description in my reference.

Darwin

The yellow guy is a male Bullock's Oriole.