With the increase in bird activity around the feeders I guess it’s no surprise that a predator would show up. This is a Cooper’s Hawk and it tried most of the day to find a meal and was unsuccessful.
I first saw this Hawk early in the morning. It was perched high in a Pine Tree behind a large branch. Initially it scared the White Winged Doves away. As it just sat there a new White Winged Dove flew below the Hawk and the Hawk immediately dove after it. It apparently missed because a few minutes later it was perched in another tree. The local birds didn’t like that at all and these large Crows were squawking at it, then the Blue Jays arrived to provide more vocal reinforcement. After about 10 minutes of being harassed it flew off once again. It was probably an hour later when I saw this same Hawk come flying out of the woods and veer towards another large Pine tree. Whatever it was crawling on that Pine tree fell towards the ground (I’m assuming a Squirrel). It was probably two hours later when I went back out into the backyard and there was this same Hawk (I’m assuming) sitting in a branch right behind my fence stalking my bird feeders. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it but the Carolina Chickadees were in such a vocal frenzy that I was drawn to that location.
.jpg "Cooper") Cooper's Hawk Scanning For Prey .jpg "Cooper") Cooper's Hawk Looking Up In The Trees
I really like these little birds. I like how they constantly are doing their little tweets. I even noticed several at my work today and was pointing them out to one of my colleagues. Then I get to my office and think I have a bug on my shirt and it turns out one of them pooped on me. Oh well, I still like them.
I took these pictures on Sunday. We probably have close to 20 or so that are hanging around the feeders. One even ventured to this older bird bath I have to get a drink of water.
 American Goldfinches Enjoying New Feeder Location American Goldfinch Getting A Drink Of Water
I think the mystery Hummingbird is solved. My friend Greg Lavaty came by on Friday so that I could help set up his computer, and if we really got lucky, to see the mystery Hummingbird that has been visiting my Coral Honeysuckle.
Fortunately the Hummingbird did appear and Greg and I captured several pictures. Greg felt 95% sure this was a female Rufous Hummingbird. The even better news is that I now see the Hummingbird every day. If she hangs around long enough for the Ruby Throatted Hummingbirds to appear, that could become very interesting. She is very possessive of the Coral Honeysuckle and will not go to any of the Hummingbird Feeders.
Rufous Hummingbird Feeding
Rufous Hummingbird Feeding On Coral Honeysuckle
It was a busy weekend, at least on Saturday. I’m doing a complete redesign of one section of the backyard. My goal for this area is that it will be much more bird friendly. I’ve already planted an Eastern Red Cedar and moved the Yaupon Holly to that area as well. My “plan” is to also building a “pondless” stream in this bird and butterfly garden. I’ll post more about this in the future.
While I was digging holes to plant the trees, I saw these little Geckos. Since Leecy loves Geckos she had to catch one and let it crawl on her (there were 2 of them). This is a Mediterranean Gecko.
Mediterranean Gecko On Leecy's Buffalo Shirt Mediterranean Gecko On Leecy's Back
I’m telling you, something strange is going on this year with the birds, at least in my yard. While I’m watching the Eastern Bluebirds, Cedar Waxwings, and the American Goldfinches, Leecy says “hello hummer!”
My first thought was it’s too early for the Ruby Throated Hummers to arrive so she’s seeing things, then I saw it as well. It’s not a Ruby Throated Hummingbird. In fact, I don’t know what kind of Hummingbird it is. I sent a picture to one of my colleagues and he suggested it was an immature Buff Bellied Hummingbird. I’m looking through all of my bird books, and I don’t see it, at least not yet.
The pictures are not that great, but I wanted to at least get some documentation of this visitor in case I never see it again.
It’s the tail throwing me off. White tip, black, then brown. It’s got a black bill, not red like a mature Buff Bellied.
Can anyone help my conclusively identify this Hummingbird? Is it common for the Houston area?
Hopefully I can get some better pictures of it tomorrow if it hangs around. I’ll update this post once this bird is conclusively identified.
Mystery Hummingbird Feeding On Coral Honeysuckle Showing Tail Feathers Mystery Hummingbird Feeding On Coral Honeysuckle
Yesterday we saw 2 Eastern Bluebirds, today we saw 3. There are 2 males (I think) and 1 female. The more mature male was also examining the bird houses. As I said before, hopefully they will decide to build a nest in 1 of them.
In the first picture, that is supposed to be an “official” Bluebird house, but the male only seems to focus on the regular bird house in picture number 3.
Male And Female Eastern Bluebird Visiting Birdhouses Male Eastern Bluebird Looking At Ground For Mealworms Male Eastern Bluebird Checking Out Potential Nesting Site
Another very warm day today in Houston, and some unusual bird activity for me. For whatever reason, the American Goldfinches arrived today. I counted at least 6. That’s a small number compared to the masses we had last year, but they did appear a little earlier than last year as well.
I only have Thistle seed in this feeder, not the other feeders so these guys had to wait around for an opening.
American Goldfinches Flocking Around Feeder
American Goldfinches Waiting For Turn At Feeder
We’re still raising Monarch Butterflies despite it being late January. Of course, this is Houston and today’s temperature was 78 degrees so it’s not like we’re having a lot of cold weather at the moment.
I had forgotten how our Maple Tree is a source of nectar for Butterflies and Honeybees until I saw this Monarch feeding from one of the new blooms. I say new blooms, but at the same time the Maple Tree is still shedding leaves for the Winter. Only in Texas….:-).
Monarch Butterfly Getting Nectar From Maple Tree 2012
I had quite the surprise today. I was sleeping in a little late since I didn’t have to work today and I awoke to what sounded like an Eastern Bluebird (the windows were open). Sure enough, I peeked outside and there were 2 Eastern Bluebirds singing their dawn song.
Here’s what’s kind of interesting about this. In 2011, we didn’t see Bluebirds until late February (February 27 I believe). I don’t know if it’s the mild Winter we’ve had so far or if perhaps I just didn’t notice them earlier last year, but I am glad they are here.
Of course after I took a couple of pictures I went inside to get some meal worms to feed them. The male was also checking out one of the bird houses we have set up. He did the same last year, but never nested in any of them. Hopefully this year will be different.
Male Eastern Bluebird First Visit 2012
I just bought (and watched) a new movie called Metamorphosis: The Beauty And Design Of Butterflies and thought I’d provide a little review.
This is one of the best Butterfly movies I have seen. The incredible detail in the video is fantastic! It is also very educational. One of the main reasons I purchased this movie is because I had read where they do an MRI on a Monarch Chrysalis. It was for that reason alone that I purchased it.
Where I have a major criticism of this movie is when it gets into evolution versus intelligent design. I’m assuming most folks know about evolution, but maybe not so much on intelligent design. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia definition so you can read about it yourself. What I wish they would have done is just present the science and factual parts about the Butterfly and not become involved in the whole evolution versus intelligent design argument. To me that detracts from the actual beauty and incredible photography of the video and of Butterflies in general. I didn’t buy the video to become convinced of evolution or intelligent design, I bought it to learn about Butterflies and I found it unfortunate that towards the end of the movie it tries to make an argument in one particular direction (I won’t spoil it for you).
So, I’d give this movie 4 out of 5 Butterfly wings for the cinematography and factual information. It loses a Butterfly wing (or two) for introducing intelligent design version evolution.
Just to close this post, this was a Butterfly that had hatched a couple of days ago and was still sitting in the Fennel where we placed it the previous evening. It is heavily cropped, but I thought it was kind of neat how the Butterfly was covered in early morning dew.
** Sorry I need to say a little more on this movie. I feel like I was politically sucker-punched. There was no reason to introduce these different agendas for folks who were simply hoping to come see an educational movie about butterflies. Suggesting the butterfly wings are beautiful not for evolutionary reasons so it must be some intelligent entity design is attempting to enforce a political agenda. which I found quite unfortunate that they decided to go that route.
Monarch Butterfly Covered In Dew
Maggie is my 10 year old (as of January 10) Golden Retriever. She’s had a rough December and January. I take that back. I’ve had a rough December and January worrying about her, she’s just been a little stressed because of her recent visit to the vet.
Back in December we took Maggie to the vet because it appeared to me she was losing just a little bit of fur and was looking a little thin. Since she is considered an elderly dog in dog years, I wanted to just be safe and have her checked out. Maggie hates the vet (unlike Sascha the German Shepherd who loves the vet) and turns into a nervous wreck during each visit. Whereas Maggie was completely healthy in terms of blood work and body, she did have a small bump on her lower jaw that I never noticed. The vet was concerned enough that he wanted to remove it immediately.
Two days later Maggie is off to the vet to have this bump removed (no wonder she hates the vet). When I heard from the vet later in the afternoon, he didn’t “think” the whatever it was he removed was cancerous, but wanted to send it off to pathology just to be sure.
In the meantime, Maggie didn’t seem to care that she had stitches in her jaw and wanted to continue to chew on her toys and bones even if they rubbed against her jaw and stitches. Sure enough, I wake up early Saturday morning and noticed all this blood and fluid in her bedding and saw this hold in her jaw. Either the stitches got stuck in her bedding and she yanked them out, or she just scratched them out. Off to the vet we go again.
Fast forward a week and Maggie is fine. The stitches didn’t need to be replaced. Her wound has completely healed. Now she’s back to being the same silly Golden Retriever whose favorite activity besides chewing marrow bones is rolling in the grass (or dirt) first thing in the morning:-).
Maggie The Golden Retriever Rolling In The Grass
Maggie The Golden Retriever Striking A Pose
I have a couple of exciting news items to share (at least they’re exciting to me). I made an impulse buy over the holidays and bought a new Canon EF 70-200 f2.8 II lens. From most of the reviews I’ve read on the web, this lens gets rave reviews. Since I sold my 100-400mm lens I haven’t had a zoom lens and thought this would be a nice lens to add to my arsenal. So far I like the lens, but I’m not quite used to shooting handheld with this lens.
About Monarch Butterflies. We’ve released over 20 Butterflies in the last two days. We brought many of the Chrysalises indoors during the last cold spell (cold for Houston, not cold for anywhere else in the U.S.) and they have really flourished. I’ve also been helping out someone I recently met by doing some testing for the OE (ophryocystis elektroscirrha) parasite.
Without further adieu, here’s a few pictures using the new lens and of the first Monarchs of 2012.
Monarch Caterpillar Eating Milkweed In Early Morning Dew
Recently Tested Monarch On Tree
Multiple Monarchs Drying Their Wings After Hatching
First Monarch Of 2012 Drying Wings In The Sun
Hopefully some folks will find this post useful in their Butterfly Gardening.
Below is a video that I recorded today of Leecy gluing some Monarch Chrysalises to a piece of cardboard. We tend to do this during Winter months when we still have Caterpillars and Chrysalises and want to protect them from inclement weather (rainy, cold).
To give you a brief verbal summary: We try and keep the Monarch Caterpillars outside as much as possible unless the temperature is expected to be a little chilly or we are going to have excessive rain. We’ll gently detach the Monarch Chrysalis from the outdoor enclosure, then bring it inside. From there, we (Leecy) uses a glue gun to glue the tip of the Chrysalis to a piece of cardboard so that it can continue to develop. We then flip the cardboard upside down and place it over a container.
Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer.
By the way, we have about 36 Monarch Butterfly Chrysalises right now (December 23, 2011)
I know I haven’t posted in a while, I’m just taking it easy. It’s also been a little more challenging to take photos since it gets dark so early.
So on to this post. I’m guessing that most folks don’t think about Butterflies two days before Christmas, but I wanted to share our Monarch Butterfly story.
While we didn’t see many Monarch Butterflies during the migration, we saw several after the expected migration, and we had quite a bit of Milkweed. The result?
Lots of Monarch Butterfly Chrysalises!
Carrier Full Of Monarch Chrysalises We’ve only had a couple of really cold days in Houston (we moved the Milkweed to the garage during that time) with the majority of the Winter being quite nice. Apparently the Monarch Caterpillars like it as well as it’s given them some time to stock up on eating Milkweed. Since we knew it was supposed to get a little cold and rainy (just 38 degrees or so), we decided to bring the Chrysalises indoors. The result is what you see above. Those black dots next to a couple of the Chrysalises are the skin of the Caterpillars.
We don’t just leave them in this little carrier, Leecy glues them to these cardboard things we have. I’ll try and post a picture or video of that within the next couple of days so you can see how we do that. Once the Butterfly emerges we release them as long as it’s reasonably sunny and above 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pretty neat huh?
Here is part 2 of my vacationing and birding trip to Quintana.
First is a Field Sparrow sitting in a tree. Their were others on its species just outside the frame of this picture.
Field Sparrow In Tree Another small bird I saw who appeared pretty tired was a White Throated Sparrow hiding in a bunch of twigs (at least I hope that’s what it is)
White Throated Sparrow Hiding In Twigs Yet another Sparrow, this one I believe is a Savannah Sparrow. Nope, it’s a Song Sparrow.
Song Sparrow In Tree One more that took me a while to figure out, was a Rose Breasted Grosbeak
Rose Breasted Grosbeak In Mix Of Trees If we head over towards the beach and jetty, there are lots of birds over there as well. The Ruddy Turnstone was a common bird that I saw.
Three Ruddy Turnstones On A Log After standing on the log for a while, one decides to walk around.
Ruddy Turnstone Walking Down Log It then stops and appears to stare at it’s reflection.
Ruddy Turnstone Staring At Reflection
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by texdr
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