Ed Forum birdwatching 2008

Seen on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of January:

Silver-eye Zosterops lateralis - 02.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand
Tui Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae - 03.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand
Bellbird Anthornis melanura - 03.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand
Kereru/Wood Pigeon Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae - 03.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand
Black-backed Gull Larus dominicanus - 02.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand
Red-billed Gull Larus novaehollandiae - 02.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand
Pied Stilt Himantopus himantopus - 02.01.08 - Otago Peninsula, New Zealand
Reef Heron Egretta sacra - 04.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand
European Blackbird Turdus merula - 02.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand

plus something squashed on the road which probably was a pukeko (they are not noticeably car-smart), but a live one will doubtlessly crop up soon.
 
It seems my impatience was misplaced! Hooray! I will add these up when I get to work.

Tearout: The reason for the Latin names in this thread is to be able to tell species apart. It's not necessary most of the time, so you don't need to use it, as long as you write at least which continent you're on (as you've already did!).

For myself, I didn't get to do as much birdwatching yesterday as I planned, due to a meeting at work, but I'll make it up this and next weekend. We have a competition here in Gothenburg next weekend --- a common race, where you have to see as many species as possible within 17 hours --- and I'll be out looking for good places to go all weekend. The goal is to find good places to see Stock doves, Grey shrikes, harriers and so on, and as I have been birdwatching in these areas for about 6.5 years, I know most of the good places already.
 
Song Thrush Turdus philomelos - 04.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand, singing beautifully into the dusk right now
Eurasian Skylark Alauda arvensis - 04.01.08 - Dunedin, New Zealand
Pied Oystercatcher Haematopus longirostris - 04.01.08 - Otago Peninsula, New Zealand
 
CurtC said:
Yesterday (01/02/2008) I saw a small bird on the windowscreen next to where I was sitting. I thought at first that it was a brown creeper, but I just checked and those have whitish undersides. The bird I saw was speckled grayish brown all over, small, about the size of a wren, but with a fairly short tail. Pics I see of the Winter Wren look a lot like what I saw, but the maps don't show those around Texas. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

I'm not very good at North American birds, but from what I can see in a cursory look through the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, some sort of Wren would be the best bet. From the distribution charts in the same book, I would say that either the Winter wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) or the House wren (Troglodytes aedon) would be the best fits, though both the Rock wren (Salpinctes obsoletus] and perhaps the Sedge wren (Cistothorus platensis) could fit as well. Does any of these fit, if you look at pictures of them?

Floyt said:
Seen on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of January:
Click to expand...

How refreshing it is to see the names of birds I can't even place to family level!

With these additions, we are now at 61 species. Not counted are:
Crows!
Dancing David's raptors
And Tearout's birds, as these are from the last 6 months.
CurtC's wren is not counted yet, either.

I should mention, perhaps, that I do have access both to my own modest collection of bird literature (mainly European birds, raptors and birds of the sea) and my supervisor's more extensive library (mainly passerines, focusing on thrushes, warblers, sparrows, and so on, but also containing a large amount of regional works, particularly in Asia). There is also a small collection of the birds of Japan and various shorebirds in my office. So given enough time, we should be able to figure out more or less everything.

ETA: Floyt posted while I was posting: the list is now of 64 species.
 
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Hmm, now I think I get it! Wait...I think I understand... wheaw.

So many animals and plants bear names like 'sapsucker' because the human naming ability was designed to be deficient in descriptors.

We could have been designed to have words like 'weird parasitical symbiotic placque-sucking half-alive viral colonist Fender guitar Chevy truck Chicago Bulls lover" built in to our language.
 
BPScooter said:
Hmm, now I think I get it! Wait...I think I understand... wheaw.

So many animals and plants bear names like 'sapsucker' because the human naming ability was designed to be deficient in descriptors.

We could have been designed to have words like 'weird parasitical symbiotic placque-sucking half-alive viral colonist Fender guitar Chevy truck Chicago Bulls lover" built in to our language.
Click to expand...

It's actually a conscious effort to save the rainforest, because if all birds had names like that, bird books would be considerably thicker.
 
BPScooter said:
We could have been designed to have words like 'weird parasitical symbiotic placque-sucking half-alive viral colonist Fender guitar Chevy truck Chicago Bulls lover" built in to our language.
Click to expand...

I just finished reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, and one thing he described is that before Linnaeus (Linne), names of animals were like that - a big long description. Linnaeus's contribution was organizing everything and using a binomial naming system.
 
Crows here. Corvus brachyrhinchos. Long Island NY, 12-30 2007
 
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Well, if we don't need to bother with Latin names, I have a few I haven't seen mentioned yet.

Grey Heron.
Buzzard.
Barn Owl.
All seen in Snowdonia, North Wales some time between 30/12/07 and 01/01/08.

I've also seen lots of little, black "m"s hanging around in flocks, but they never seem to get close enough to see what they are.

And pigeons. Lots of pigeons. I beleive the technical name is Rattus Avianus.
 
Going out to my car this morning, I watched a flight of:

Branta canadensis - Canada Goose - Jefferson County, Colorado USA, 4 Jan 2008
 
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A few not yet added:

Takahe (Mr Blue) kerikeri Island NZ(!) July/Aug 1991 (I have a photo of him trying to eat my leg)


2007-12-07 Redwing (Turdsus iliacus) Great Missenden (Bucks), UK (taken the kids to the Roald Dahl museum) for a cross-thread plug...

2007-12-25 Kent, UK

Pied wagtail (Motacilla alba)
Jay (Garrulus glandarius)
Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus)

Today at work (Manchester, UK)
Heron (Ardea cinera)

plus the prevciously mentioned blackbird, blue tit, robin...
 
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Oh yes and one of my favorites: the merlin (Falco columbarius). about once a month during the summer when I am in the local hills (peak district).

Ditto

Does anyone in the UK use the RSPB website? I find it very good for a pretty poor bird-identifier like me...

ETA: and the Curlew (Numenius arquata) and lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) which I also see frequently during the summer evenings on the moorlands, (20 mins cycle from my house...)
 
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We haven't been feeding birds this year, so songbirds aren't hanging around the house much, and it's been wicked cold (Western Vermont, near bottom end of Lake Champlain). Crows like the compost pile and are always seen in abundance. Otherwise, the main thing we spot this time of year is raptors. We have a couple of pileated woodpeckers very nearby who fly through the back yard frequently. They're big and noisy, pretty hard to miss. Red tail hawks are very common. We saw three or four today while driving around. The big thrill today was a couple of bald eagles down in the valley in front of my house. Didn't even have to go out looking for them. They still are said not to nest on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain, but they come around frequently to a local stream which stays open when the lakes and ponds have frozen. A friend who until recently lived on Champlain near a narrows that rarely freezes used to see several families of eagles fishing from the edge of the ice, and often had them perch a few feet from his upstairs windows. We would occasionally go down to visit and watch them. If you've never been close to an eagle, let me tell you this is one VERY impressive bird!

We hear, but don't see, a couple of barred owls that live in the woods behind us.

Almost every supermarket parking lot has flocks of chipping sparrows, which seem entirely undaunted by the traffic, pecking away at scraps, and often perching on the tires of parked cars.
 
Green woodpecker (Picus viridis): Birmingham, England: June 2007.

That's all I have!
 
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A couple more spotted today (4 jan 2008) in Jefferson County, Colorado, USA

Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus - Pinyon Jay
Falco mexicanus - Prairie Falcon

I also heard an owl right at dusk, but didn't manage to find it with the binoculars.
 
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Before I go on, I'd like to remind people that only birds seen in 2008 count. Some leeway is extended for birds seen on the night between December 31st and January 1st, though.

I was supposed to go out watching today, but of course my stomach got upset last night, and I haven't been able to crawl out of bed until now (about 11.00 am). I'll see if I can get away some before it turns dark tonight...

Also, Latin names are still preferable, if not necessary, as it saves me the trouble of having to look them up^^.

Also: it seems EVERYONE in the US sees Bald eagles all the time. Are they very common, or do you just live in places where they are? I hardly ever see eagles here in Sweden, apart from a few every winter here along the coast.

Bruto: I was stationed at a bird observatory in three periods last year, and during the last period (September - October), we caught a bunch of Rough-legged buzzards (Buteo lagopus). They're like a third the size of an eagle, perhaps, but sufficient to be very impressive. Before I finish my PhD, I will have held at least two, hopefully three, species of very large eagles as well, and I can't wait until that happens!

Now I'm off to actually do some birdwatching of my own^^.
 
BTW I was having a brainstorm about the Takahe,
It was Tiritiri Matangi Island not Kerikeri
 
Eastern Bluebird, Sialia sialis
Black-capped Chickadee, Poecile atricapillus
Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos
Seagulls, (unknown... too darn many kinds of 'em)
 
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