What is your favorite bird? And every fowl encounter you've had under the sun

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Oh look! Another Killdeer!

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Next to what appears to be a curlew! (I see those here sometimes as well)
 
It is! A long billed one! They’re yet another one my favorite birds. Here’s another one taken the same day. (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
I love falcons, hawks, and other raptors. They’re so beautiful and they’re quite smart. There’s a hawk that sits on a telephone pile next to my house every day. I’ve named him Agrippa.
 
Yeah, what Greenie said, very regal and majestic. If I were an atheist, It really would seem like a stretch to attribute such beautiful creatures to scientific progression.
 
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Another young Cooper’s hawk from an earlier year learning to look majestic.

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Don’t worry, we don’t generally get mad, but those crows receive payback for their misdeeds. Not all crows are bad mind you. I even have a few good friends who happen to be crows. But It only takes a few bad apples to make for an ugly scene.
 
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The little Ravens here often follow and scold a fox which is handy (foxes are introduced ferrals)
I had a laugh awhile back when a magpie flew past dropping the mouse he was planning to eat in his
hurry to join 8 or so other magpies in chasing an eagle that had come into their territory 🙂
 
Crows have a grudge against foxes because they resent them being smarter. It’s not the fault of the fox, though.

 
My dad taught me so much of what I know of birds,I have memories of being very young gazing into birds nests with him on the farm ,taking note of songs and flight 🙂 In his young days egg collecting wasn’t illegal
and he had a fine collection.
 
Years ago, when my kids were young, we were out walking and our dog went in a garden and discovered a young swift It may have fallen out of its nest . Its wings were not ready for flying.
I actually thought that its legs were damaged as it seemed unable to walk. Anyhow, I rang the RSPCA and they told me how to feed it. Swifts are high-protein eaters, so baby swifts need to eat cut-upworms, cut-up egg yolk, and cut up raw meat. We named him Jonathan.
His first meal - tiny pieces of chopped egg yolk - he refused to open his beak. I had to carefully prise his beak open and dropped some cooked egg yolk in. After a few beak fulls he realised he was being fed and was waiting with beak agape. From then on when it was feeding time he fed readily and when he was full he clamped his beak shut.
I was given the number of a farmer’s wife who lived in the country, who was wel known locally for rescuing birds. When I told her that Jonathan was unable to walk, she told me that that is normal for swifts - they have very weak legs. If he needed to get from point A to point B he would grab a piece of carpet with his beak and haul himself slowly where he wanted to go. I was amazed, but th upside of this (handicap) is that swifts have incredible wings and are master flyers. They eat (flying insects ) take forty winks, and almost totally live their lives in the air. They never land on the ground. But they do build nests up high.
Jonathan was living in a large cardboard box, ( segregated from the cat and dog ) After a day or two I noticed he wa perched on the edge of his box energetically flapping his wings .
This is how they strengthen their wings for flight. He exercised his wings for days and Janice ( the farmer lady ) told me it was time to take him out for flying practice. I was to throw him up into the air a bit, so he could gain momentum. I tried this a few times - he could fly vertically, but couldn’t gain height. She told me that his wing feathers needed to grow some more. He could fly vertically and then would plop down out of sight somewhere. So she took pity on me and told me to bring Jonathan to her and she and her husband would oversee his final care before release. It worked out very well and about a week later she told me that they had successfully released him . He had taken to the sk,y, did about three circles around the farm and then flew off, presumably to find some other swifts.
 
I had the old song “Born Free” playing in my mind as I read your story 🙂.

It reminded me, I kept a burrowing owl for a few days. Back when I worked at the pet shop, the hardware store across the street called to say they had an unwanted bird in their attic, and could we remove it. We grabbed our nets from our bird room and went over. After several minutes of mad fluttering about on the bird’s part, and calculated swinging of the nets on our part, we had our bird. I was surprised to discover it was a small owl, which we later identified as a burrowing owl. We took it home and put in an unused rabbit hutch. We fed it mice, which it hungrily ate, later producing the little regurgitated pellets of indigestible bone and fur as proof of having eaten. After about a week, I went out and opened the rabbit hutch. I looked steadily at the owl, and it returned my gaze in what seemed like a brief staring contest. Then like a flash it flew past my head out into the open air. Immediately, several smaller birds formed a rear escort, encouraging the owl to move along. We lived near a very large open field at that time which had not yet been developed, with lots of gophers and rabbits and small canyons. That is where I last saw the owl flying, as suitable a spot as any in the city, I suppose, for a burrowing owl.
 
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I don’t think we have burrowing owls here in England. Speaking about the smaller birds. A few years ago I had a nice backyard and enjoyed feeding the garden birds. We had regular visits from robins, some sparrows, starlings, finches blackbirds as well as pigeons and crows. Early one day I looked out and saw a kestrel sitting on the fence plucking a little bird he had caught. It was too late to do anything. So I continued to feed the birds until one day when I looked out the window again there was Mr.Kestrel . He silently flew into a tree and stationed himself and waited patiently . If its not kestrels, its cats . I wonder how many birds never make it especially through the Winter
 
Burrowing Owls adopt well to the urban environment. We had a family here for a while living in the storm drain of an auto glass replacement shop. Here’s one of them checking out a jet taking off from the near by air force base. (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
We lived right between the Santa Monica airport and LAX when I was growing up, so there were always planes flying overhead. I had two Silkie chickens and a duck back then. The hens were instinctively always on the lookout for birds of prey, and whenever a small plane passed overhead they would look up, freeze and make a distinctive warning call that sounded very much to me like, “Hawk!”
 
Just make sure there’s no good hiding places near your feeders for cats and provide a brush pile or dense shrubbery close enough so that the birds have good place to run and hide.

It’s the Cooper’s Hawks that gives feeder birds fits around here. It’s easy to tell when they’re around, there’s no birds. Here’s another pic of a youngster in my back yard. They seem to like my water feature. (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

I’ve only seen a kestrel take a finch off of my feeders once.
 
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