An inquisitive old fart with a camera
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.
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.
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 😉
…eating the remains of the last few paltas (avocados) at such close range.
But there is that other thing.
Found on the dog walk among pine trees. Though we have robins (zorzal colorado) at home, we have never seen one out here. What other type of bird lays blue eggs?
Teros are common here: raucous, aggressive when they feel threatened, and apparently loving to park themselves in the middle of things. Not all that long ago, they appeared to be thinking about building a nest where I was standing. Not only in the middle of the path, but in the sitting area. Happily they changed their mind. I was thinking I’d need to make “detour” (desvío) signs to steer pedestrians away from the nest.
For the past two or three years, a tero couple (same ones?) have had chicks in the spring, two out of three of which survived to adulthood.
The blue tape on our glass sliding door is at human eye level. The lower tape is at dog eye level. We did have a human walk into the door and break it years ago, and the dogs tend to go crazy when they see birds in the backyard and I don’t want them slamming into the glass (plate glass BTW; outlawed for this use in the USA 50 years ago).
Unfortunately, the pigeon paid no attention to either. RIP.
I put the avocados I pick up off the ground on the patio table (otherwise unused this time of year, hence dirty). This one was quite damaged, but perfect for our well-fed little robin friend. In the past, it has feasted on fruit on the tree, so this is a welcome development.
Day 1: a thoroughly and inexplicably dead pigeon appears on the dog walk.
Day 2: the entire neighborhood has found out.
That’s a pigeon it’s got for dinner, best I can tell. With all the raptors we have here, and all the easy targets, like pigeons, I’ve always expected to see an attack, but never have.