I’ve been pretty bed-bound — recovering from bronchitis. My bed faces a wall of windows overlooking open forest, and it’s a real bird theater out there. All day long, robins, wrens, blue jays, mourning doves, and crows fly through. The mourning doves pick among the dry leaves on the forest floor.
Both yesterday and today, I’ve seen a falcon! The female American kestrel.
February 6th, 2012 at 12:25PM
I’m jealous! I do get to see a great deal of red-tailed hawks around here, though. They like to perch on the lights over the highways to look for prey. http://ralphbarrera.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/red-tailed-hawks-perched-along-mopac-highway/ I rarely see crows, although I did see a few today, to my surprise. They tend to hang out in the less populated areas. And we don’t seem to have mourning doves here, but there are the very similar white-winged doves everywhere. The bird you always see all over the place here is the great-tailed grackle. If you go to certain areas at night, a certain Hitchcock movie might come to mind: http://photoblog.statesman.com/tag/noisy-birds-of-austin http://austintexasdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2011/02/grackles-invasion.html
February 6th, 2012 at 8:30PM
I think the white winged doves are prettier than the mourning doves.
And grackles! Yikes!
M.
February 9th, 2012 at 10:25AM
We have many Cooper’s Hawks around here. They glower in the treetops, grimly scanning the grounds for fast food in the form of other birds or squirrels. They are finicky eaters, taking only the thoracic and abdominal organs and leaving the rest of the carcass. We get the occasional peregrine and plenty of owls.