Category: Wildlife

Three down

Two days ago, a dove —probably this one— flew up from the upstairs patio when I opened the door, a few feet from a similar one, dead in a corner. This morning I saw this one near the carport, relocating several times to at last find its way into the barbacoa (my workshop), out of the pouring rain, where it died. When I went upstairs, before the rain, to clean up, there was another, smaller one, dead next to the other.

Best guess is that they all got into something poisonous, maybe brought it back to the nest. But when I saw the first dead one, I looked at the nest and saw nothing there. Hard to get a clear view, but also hard to miss something bright white. Sorry guys. We enjoyed having you around.

Memo to self: close screens

Out at our chacra (mini-farm), now happily no longer ours, I discovered an unusual contribution to my working mess: twigs in the sink…

…which had fallen from the light fixture I had built above.

And there were more in the refrigerator.

It seems to have been an avian case study into where not to build a nest. I was glad for that. And I closed the screen on the kitchen window. No idea why it was left open — painting, maybe — but previously I had startled a cat that made a hasty exit through the opened screen. Ya’d think a felluh would learn….

Wait … what?

Avocados are long gone. Buds emerging for the next crop.

So what do I find this morning but a freshly-fallen avocado, freshly devoured. Huh?

I didn’t get a picture of the bird, but when I first saw this, it was calmly eating, that far away, glancing up at me from time to time, as if wondering—as usual—who exactly I thought I was hanging around its feeding station.

Swallows!

I’m not sure I have ever experienced this before: the mesmerizing aerial dance of swallows feeding (presumably on mosquitoes—yesss!).

Not in this clip, but an hornero bird returned to its nest atop the power pole with a single screech, entirely atypical because their normal call is long and loud. It was as though it found the air traffic overwhelming, and I would have to agree. A moment later, it moved lower onto the wire, and when a swallow tried to land on the wire near it…well, it was not happy about that.

The early bird?

OK, not my best videography (ya think?). That’s a bird finishing eating a worm, bit by bit, in the middle of an intersection, oblivious to our two dogs nearby. I have never watched a bird eating a worm in the open. I always imagined they just swallowed them whole, rather than pulling them to pieces. And why in the middle of the road? I just stared, until it occurred to me to record it, which is why you don’t see the juicy bits earlier.

Next time 😉

Love birds

We’ve had a couple pigeons hanging around for several years now. The pair I saw the most in the past were gray and white. This year they’re both white. They nested on an air conditioning unit upstairs. I saw one eggshell and once the two of them with another, full grown, black and white. Much more interesting than just gray.

As you’ll no doubt agree. Here’s what two two gray pigeons look like.