Birdfeeding
Mar. 22nd, 2023 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithToday is cloudy, cool, and wet. It rained last night so the ground is still soaked.
I fed the birds. I've seen a flock of sparrows, two mourning doves, and a pair of house finches. :D I am so happy that the house finch I saw yesterday seems to have a mate.
While outside, I also flushed a medium-sized long-billed bird. While I didn't get a close look at it, I suspect it to be a woodcock. Upon looking them up, I discovered that they are common migrants through Illinois, though uncommon in winter or summer, and they like wet habitat such as swamps or wet woodlands. We live on reclaimed (and regularly disputed by nature) prairie marsh and several miles away is a wildlife refuge adjacent to a lake with rivers and creeks running through it. Lovely stopover if you are a wetland bird.
One of the quirks of my brain is that I have hunter-sight, which is attracted by motion and excels at breaking camouflage. Sometimes I will catch the merest glimpse of a critter, often a bird, and my brain will instantly spit out an ID like that. It also happened with a dark-blue streak in a pine forest out west: Stellar's jay. This is what happens when you consume whole wildlife guides and have a hyperactive extrapolative engine in your head. It keeps going, "Look! A bird!"
Exciting indoor news: weeks ago I planted a packet of random succulent seeds. I spotted the first sprout yesterday -- a tiny spiky thing with a couple of millimeter-sized leaves. It is only visible because it is green against a dark brown background. <3
I fed the birds. I've seen a flock of sparrows, two mourning doves, and a pair of house finches. :D I am so happy that the house finch I saw yesterday seems to have a mate.
While outside, I also flushed a medium-sized long-billed bird. While I didn't get a close look at it, I suspect it to be a woodcock. Upon looking them up, I discovered that they are common migrants through Illinois, though uncommon in winter or summer, and they like wet habitat such as swamps or wet woodlands. We live on reclaimed (and regularly disputed by nature) prairie marsh and several miles away is a wildlife refuge adjacent to a lake with rivers and creeks running through it. Lovely stopover if you are a wetland bird.
One of the quirks of my brain is that I have hunter-sight, which is attracted by motion and excels at breaking camouflage. Sometimes I will catch the merest glimpse of a critter, often a bird, and my brain will instantly spit out an ID like that. It also happened with a dark-blue streak in a pine forest out west: Stellar's jay. This is what happens when you consume whole wildlife guides and have a hyperactive extrapolative engine in your head. It keeps going, "Look! A bird!"
Exciting indoor news: weeks ago I planted a packet of random succulent seeds. I spotted the first sprout yesterday -- a tiny spiky thing with a couple of millimeter-sized leaves. It is only visible because it is green against a dark brown background. <3
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Date: 2023-03-24 12:04 am (UTC)Yes ...
Date: 2023-03-24 12:39 am (UTC)