[noumenal]

Yesterday, I went for a bike ride and saw an awesome red-winged blackbird. For y'all that haven't seen one before, they look like this:

 

Are there any other birdwatchers out there? I usually make special trips to birdwatch a couple times a year. I'd like to go more, but I usually end up mixing it in with camping and fishing and so on.

[Hip Priest]

I like a spot of birdwatching. Usually it's places quite local to me such as Thurtaston Country PArk and Bidston Hill. Also we get a lot of migrating coastal birds in the Dee estuary.

Sometimes in Chester we see a raven, which is great.

Sometimes there are special ferry cruises out into Liverpool bay for the purpose of birdwatching. On last September's we watched Arctic Terns, which was very nice.

WHen I see something intereseting from now on, I'll post in this thread.

Common-fairly common for us are: bullfinches, peregrine falsons, greenfinches, great tits, blue tits, moorhens, kestrels, woodpeckers and many more, especially wader types.

In our (small, urban) garden, we only get magpies, jays, blackbirds and a few others with any regularity.

[noumenal]

Hip Priest, I bet there are lots of birds you see often that I have never seen.

I actually considered building a set-up with a mic and parabola for recording birds. I have a book (The Singing Life of Birds by Donald Kroodsma) that explains how to do it. Birdsong is really interesting. I am a huge nerd.

[noumenal]

My pic of a Scarlet Tanager that I took in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park:

 

[noumenal]

There are a lot of Killdeer around here now. I hear them squawking as I drive around. The little bastards will pretend to be injured if you go near their nests.

[Hip Priest]

I'm just now about to get into the whole birdsong thing. I've been trying a bit, and I'm armed with some recordings to help me learn.

I live close to pockets of very accessible but under-used countryside, so there are decent populations of nice things. We're also furtunate to live close to two very different rivers - the industrial Mersey on one side and the protected Dee on the other. We get a lot of migratory birds here.

[Hip Priest]

Arctic Terns; they are great to watch in flight, swooping and turning, harrasing the other birds.

[noumenal]

I've only seen arctic terns on TV.

[Hip Priest]

Well, right now I'm logging off to go for a walk around the West Kirby area, so there's a chance I'll see some waders.

[krastian]

I love spotting a cardinal when everything is blanketed in snow.

[jon boy]

i just saw a fox walk through my garden.

although not a bird, it is still quite rare and wildlife related.

[Iain]

Fox...rare? Don't know about that. I used to see them around town quite a lot. Well, I saw what I'm sure was the same fox 3 times in Leicester (it had a limp). I was at a pedestrian crossing waiting for the green man and this fox came up and sat on the kerb and waited for the light with me. It was a bit weird. Then I saw it in the same area a couple of other times.

[noumenal]

This a cool page from a book from 1650 called Musurgia Universalis by Athanasius Kircher:

 

The parrot is saying "hello" in Classical Greek.

[noumenal]

That book is full of the coolest illustrations ever:

 

 

 

[noumenal]

Look at this keyboard with the extra keys to make up for the retarded systems of tuning they had back then:

 

[Inhuman]

I plan to do some this summer since I get up at sunrise to go to work. The bike ride on the way there is beautiful because I pass waterfalls and rapids on a riverside bikepath, so I stop to watch the sunrise all the time and there's plenty of birds

[jon boy]

Originally Posted by Iain

Fox...rare? Don't know about that. I used to see them around town quite a lot. Well, I saw what I'm sure was the same fox 3 times in Leicester (it had a limp). I was at a pedestrian crossing waiting for the green man and this fox came up and sat on the kerb and waited for the light with me. It was a bit weird. Then I saw it in the same area a couple of other times.

it was quite rare for me, but perhaps not as rare as some other animals i suppose. thats only the second fox i have ever seen in my life.

i did see a kingfisher get a fish once which was pretty amazing and a pike grab another smaller fish but thats my wildlife story's over in the blink of an eye.

[saoq]

there's this composer, Olivier Messiaen, who used to sit and notate birds singing. - that's some ear i say! I think he incorporated several birdsongs into his music.

[RIPfrey05]

bird watching is boring..unles your talking about watching "birds" as in gals

[Hip Priest]

Today we went on a trip into Liverpool bay, organised by the RSPB and Liverpool Museum. A very pleasant afternoon, with the following sightings (in order):

Sandwich Tern
Kittiwake
Common Gull
Lesser Black-Backed Gull
Greater Black-Backed Gull
Shag
Guillemot
Cormorant
Arctic Tern
Common Tern
Arctic Shua
Long-Tailed Skua
Red-Throated Diver
Great Crested Grebe
Herring Gull
Common Scoter
Bar-Tailed Godwit
Mediteranean Gull

(also some seals and porpoises, but they are obviously not birds)