New Yard Birds ~ Pine Siskin, House Finch or Sparrow?

After weeks of seeing the same old yard birds (Red-breasted & White-breasted Nuthatches, Downy Woodpecker, and Black-capped Chickadees), it's nice to get some new birds in the yard. I posted recently about the Brown Creeper that was new to the bunch. A few days ago, a sweet little brown and white streaked bird joined the yard gang. My first thought was Pine Siskin, but it is really difficult to positively I.D. a nondescript small brown and white streaked bird.  In the birding community these are called Little Brown Jobs (LBJ's).  I researched the Pine Siskin on my iBird app and in my bird field guides.  Clues that led me to to the I.D. were the pointy beak and notched tail. I did not however, see any yellow on the wings or base of tail, but it is not always visible on a perched bird. I recall the first time I saw Pine Siskins at my feeder, it was a siskin in flight photo that cinched the I.D. for me. Without seeing the tell tale yellow, I could not be 100% on the identity of Pine Siskin.

Cut to the next day, when much to my surprise I see a spry little red-headed bird scoping out the balcony feeder.  I did a double-take... Yes, I DID just see a red-headed bird, a new bird in the yard!  Yippee!  Now this one I was sure on the identity, it was a male House Finch.  But now I was more confused about the previous day's bird. Could the Pine Siskin have been a female House Finch? I spent some time consulting the field guides, Googling images of  Pine Siskins and House Finches and concluded it was indeed a Pine Siskin. Later I spotted a little bird outside the window in the neighbors Lilac bush.  It too was a little brown job.  But this one, I knew right away was a Song Sparrow, by the brown spot on it's belly.  But without the spot, all three birds look very similar.

Check out the updated lists on the new Bird Lady's Lists page. Here is the cute little Pine Siskin with Mr. White, the resident White-breasted Nuthatch.

Pine Siskin & White-breasted Nuthatch
JPEG edit

Pine Siskin & White-breasted Nuthatch
RAW edit

Photography Talk

Not the greatest of pics. I'm still trying to perfect shooting from behind the sliding glass door, with the tripod setup. It creates a less-than-ideal back lighting situation, and I just haven't got the settings down.  I did some reading online and in my camera manual and set my camera for spot metering, which should help when the background is brighter than the subject like it is in my balcony feeder setup. I will test it out tomorrow.

For the above pic, I was shooting in Shutter Priority mode with the shutter speed @ 1/256, f/6.5 This is an edit of the RAW photo, with some post processing done in Photoshop Elements 7. Honestly, I have been trying to do more of the RAW editing, but I'm not really happy with the results. Obviously, I still have lots to learn!

~ Sherrie (Bird Lady)

Exciting Sighting and a Few Views

Exciting Sighting... I like how that sounds... Ex-CIT-ing SIGHT-ing!  And by a Few Views, I mean Bird Lady Blog has surpassed 2500 page views!

Exciting Sighting

It started out as another trip to town and back with the family.  I usually drive because I get car sick easily when I don't. I was counting my Red-tailed Hawks along the highway like I always do. My Bird Lady Assistant (the husband) was not cooperating with me that day. He didn't want to press the record button on my voice memo app on my iPhone when I would see a bird so I could record the location and time. Something about him wanting the family to live.  You see the family thinks I should watch the road while I am driving, and I do, but I just can't help seeing the birds around me, even when I'm driving.  (Days later I listened to my recordings and hear his whole conversation about this because he forgot to turn the record button off.) We did our errands in town and then headed back to the lake, seeing along the way a couple of crows, over a dozen blackbirds, an American Kestrel, several pigeons, a gull, and 9 Red-tailed Hawks!  Hard to identify some of them when your driving and attempting to preserve the lives of your family riding in the car.

When we are almost home, off of the highway, not quite to our private road, I see something alongside the road. I blink a couple of times, slow down the car and could not believe what I was seeing!  A couple of feet from our car, there was a hawk feasting on a dead turkey.  We had seen the dead turkey along side the road a couple of days ago. Bird Lady Assistant (BLA) and my son Beau had the best view being on the passenger side of the car and later reported that the hawk was staring us down with a mad look on it's face because we were interrupting his meal. No sooner had I realized what I was seeing, the hawk flew up in the trees.  Of course I had to get out of the car so I could see what was going on. I assumed it was a Red-tailed seeing what I thought was some rustiness of a tail and a very dark back.  It was one big-ass hawk!  The turkey was well... dead, and there were feathers scattered about, and the poor thing's head and neck had been stripped and eaten and was just a thin resemblance of what it had been. BLA wanted to get going home, and there was a car behind us, so I had to leave, without even getting a picture.  I wanted to go back, but we had groceries to unload and it was almost getting dark.  Of course I can't post a story without some pictures, so I went back... a couple of days later, and the entire carcus had been picked clean.  I did take a pic, but it's a bit disgusting.  If you really want to see it, click on the 'cute' turkey pic to be taken to the 'disgusting' eaten turkey pic.  If you're squeamish, don't click on the photo below. 

Another sighting that was new to the yard this week, was a Brown Creeper joining the flock of winter feeders at the suet. While I was adding it to my lists, I decided to start a page on the blog for my lists. You will find it under the scrolling picture banner at the top of the page right after the Photo Gallery link. It's called Bird Lady's Lists.  This is where I will keep my updated yard list, 2013 Big Year list, and my life list.  One of my goals of the year is to get to 100 birds on my life list!  I'm sitting about 94 right now.  I think 6 new birds is do-able, don't you?

Brown Creeper

Also new on my 2013 Big Year list this week is the American Robin. These birds remind me of spring and with the news today that Punxsutawney Phil, the ground hog did NOT see his shadow today could mean an early spring!  I saw about 25 robins roosting in a tree, when I was trying to identify some blackbirds, who ended up being European Starlings. So I added both to the 2013 list. I don't particularly care for the starlings, but the robins, are such great birds.  I didn't get decent photos of the robins, since they were quite far away.  I barely could make them out with the 30x zoom lens and then magnified again on the computer.  They blended so well into the trees. I did discover that I really should not use the binoculars while out and about birding and driving around in the car. I have a real problem with motion sickness and migraines, and looking through the binoculars for more than a few seconds makes my eyes twist and gives me a horrible headache.  Nix the plan to get binoculars for the car. The photos I am sharing today are some of my past favorite robin eating berries pics that I've taken.

American Robin

 

A Few Views

This has been an exciting couple of weeks, participating in the Grow Your Blog party. Bird Lady Blog started with 6 followers, and as of today, has 46 followers!  I'm not sure about the exact view count before the party, but I'm happy to say we've got over 2500 views now!  I know we have about tripled our page views in about 2 months.  I have really enjoyed visiting all sorts of interesting blogs and look forward to getting to know my new followers better.