Plucky Parent

.The other day I went to check on the Killdeer nest near the campus tennis courts. Although I didn't go very near the nest, the parent leapt off it and came running over to confront me.

In typical Killdeer fashion, the bird then moved off, screeching and feigning wing injuries.

As I let it lead me away from the nest, I noted that the nest had lost one of its four eggs. It seems strange that any predator would take one egg but would leave the others alone but I suppose a snake might have managed to get one egg before the parents drive it away. I hope the other eggs survive until they hatch, which should be some time in the next week.
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Vultures

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As regular readers know, I have a soft spot for vultures. Apart from the fact that they prevent our being ankle-deep in roadkill, I think their flying abilities are simply amazing.

Turkey Vultures are particularly elegant fliers and most days they seem to drift endlessly around the sky without ever flapping their wings. I tend to think that if angels existed, they would fly like Turkey Vultures.

Black Vultures are not quite such masters of the air. In fact, one way to tell them from Turkey Vultures is the way they flap their wings fairly frequently. However, they still make impressive use of wind and air currents to stay afloat with the minimum of effort.

Of course, neither species is as impressive when on the ground. The photo below was taken on Longenbaugh Road last week when I came across a bunch of Black Vultures feeding on the carcass of a dead calf.

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Bathing Beauty

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The other day Dee pointed out that the birdbath in our backyard was empty of water and covered in dirt and mold. So I went out, scrubbed it down and filled it with water.  My presence scared off several birds - including an Orange-crowned Warbler - that been hanging out in a wisteria behind the birdbath. 

A few minutes later I looked out of the window just as the Warbler flew down to the birdbath and started bathing, while a House Sparrow and an American Goldfinch perched on the edge of the bath and looked on.

After a little while, the Warbler seemed to have finished. But then it clearly decided that it needed a much more thorough soaking and back into the water it went.

P.S.

Dee was delighted when this bird's orange crown became visible during its bath, because she has often complained that you never actually see any orange on the head of Orange-crowned Warblers. By contrast, Ruby-crowned Kinglets frequently raise their ruby crowns when agitated.

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An Iconic Texas Bird

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When someone mentions Texas birds, the first species that always springs to my mind is the Black-bellied Whistling Duck. I know that they're not the most glamorous or exciting of our avian residents. And I realize that they're not specifically Texan birds - their range extends to other US states and to many Latin American countries. But they somehow seem to fit Texas so well. Perhaps it's because, like the state, they're big and bold and sometimes downright brassy.

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are resident in southeast Texas but they seem much more common here in the summer than in the winter. At this time of year you can't go far in our area without seeing some either flying overhead or just standing around. 

In flight they are very easy to recognize by their size, their general shape and the white patches on their wings. (The white on the wings helps to distinguish them from Fulvous Whistling Ducks, summer visitors which have all-black wings.)



As they're more like geese than ducks, they spend much more time grazing in fields or on the shores of ponds and lakes than they do feeding on the water. 

They're easily identified by their combination of black belly, white wing stripe, orange bill, white eye ring and punk hairstyle.



Unlike other geese and ducks, they are often seen perching on fences, on trees and on utility poles. (At the college, their favorite perches are the tops of the tall lampposts in our parking lots.)


This perching ability is perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Black-bellied Whistling Ducks. After all, they have webbed feet which can't curl around like those of most birds. So it constantly amazes me to see them, even on very windy days, standing on utility wires and presumably managing to do so purely by balance.

For four or five years in a row we had several pairs of Whistling Ducks raise families on the retention ponds at the CyFair campus. Unfortunately,  none nested here last year. Perhaps they'll return later this year, now that construction work at the college has stopped.

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Bathing at Work

.Our campus includes an artificial river that at one point runs over a series of stony steps. Great-tailed Grackles love the area.

This male was happy just to potter around in the water.

Later in the day, a female decided it was the perfect place to bathe. She was having such a great time that I couldn't resist taking a whole set of photos!

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Vultures

.Driving along Porter Road End yesterday, I came across a bunch of Turkey and Black Vultures picking the flesh off what looked like the skeleton of a cow. Most of the Vultures flew off when I stopped but a couple of brave Black Vultures stayed where they were.

It's easy to distinguish between our two Vulture species. Black Vultures have gray/black heads and necks and their plumage is black except for white wing tips.

Turkey Vultures, which are significantly larger, have red faces and they have white feathers all along the trailing edge of their wings.   

The two species have very different flying styles, too. Once they are in the air, Turkey Vultures rarely flap their wings. They don't need to, because they are incredibly good gliders. Black Vultures are less good at gliding and they have to flap their wings frequently to stay aloft or to gain altitude. So if you see a Vulture in flight and it's flapping its wings, you can be pretty sure that it's a Black Vulture.
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Heartbreaking!

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Over the past weeks we've had many more birds than usual in our yards and at our feeders and birdbaths. This has made for entertaining viewing but it has also led to a major problem: avian pox. This is a disease that can spread quickly from individual to individual when birds are sharing (and pooping on) feeders and birdbaths. It is particularly prevalent among House Finches, of which we have a bumper crop this year. While not usually fatal, avian pox typically causes temporary blindness, which obviously increases an affected bird's chances of dying from predation, hunger and/or thirst.

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I mentioned a few weeks ago that we had a couple of juvenile House Finches that were blind as a result of avian pox. We kept filling (and cleaning) our feeders and birdbaths in the hope that these birds would recover and both of them have coped remarkably well. However, on Monday I noticed that another young Finch was having eye problems. Then I spotted an adult male Finch hiding, blind, in one of the flower beds.
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As the pox was clearly spreading throughout our flock of Finches and could have even affected our other yard visitors, we took down our feeders and emptied the birdbaths.

The next several days were really very sad as we watched bird after bird arrive in our yards and search in vain for the feeders, or check out the top of our fence for peanuts, or fly onto the birdbaths only to find they were empty. And it was totally heartbreaking to watch the blind Finches fluttering desperately around where the feeders had been and to know that we might well have condemned them to death from hunger and thirst.

By yesterday our yards were almost empty of birds all day. The only ones we saw were a pair of Carolina Chickadees foraging in the leaves of a yucca and the occasional White-winged Dove sitting forlornly on one of our fences.

However, there has been one good effect. Our American Beautyberry had been ignored as a food source, even though it was covered in plump berries. When I looked yesterday, it had been absolutely stripped of fruit. So some of birds - perhaps the Northern Mockingbirds and Cardinals - had clearly reverted to looking for natural food in our yards.

We're going to leave our feeders down and birdbaths empty for at least another week. Hopefully by then the Finches will have been dispersed for long enough for the pox to have subsided. Then we will experiment with putting out a little food and water but will watch to make sure that the House Finches do not return en masse. In the meantime we're certainly going to miss them and our other regular visitors.
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Robins

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While most of the birds oncentrate on eating the seed or suet that we put out in our yards, the American Robins prefer to find their own food. And they are very good at doing so!

I was watching one of them yesterday and I was amazed by how successful it was at finding worms and bugs in our lawn.

It would walk slowly across the grass.

Every so often it would stop, presumably when it heard movement on or under the ground. It would cock its head to one side to listen for the exact location of its prey.

Then it would pounce and drag out the hapless worm or bug and eat it. 

As far as I could tell, the Robin caught something every time that it tried. That's a much high rate of success than most predators, many of which only catch heir prey once out of every ten attempts.

Peanuts Again

.Over the past couple of days I've kept putting out peanuts on our fence and the Blue Jays and other birds that have continued to come in to eat them have been keeping us entertained.

Young Northern Cardinals have been the most frequent visitors ...

but a couple of their parents have also dropped by.

A Carolina Wren has taken to checking out the situation and usually goes off with the biggest nut it can find. 

Although I didn't manage to get photos, the nuts have also attracted at least a few House Sparrows, House Finches and even a White-winged Dove.

I was pleased to see that some Carolina Chickadees finally managed to get a look in. One spent a while holding down chunks of nut with its feet while it picked at them.

Then  it seemed to decide that it was missing out by focusing only on pieces of broken peanuts and so flew away with a much bigger prize.

All the activity on the fence has attracted Northern Mockingbird. One juvenile was content to watch intently from the nearby shed roof. A younger Mockingbird was bolder and flew down to the fence. Unable to work out how to deal with the nuts itself, it tried begging food from one of its parents.

Unfortunately, the "parent" was actually an older sibling, who looked surprised and perhaps even a little indignant at being mistaken for a parent.
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