Bird Feeder Camera Snippets

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Every week – I download the videos accumulated on the bird feeder camera and note any of special interest. Here are some recent finds:

On 7/6: A male finch appeared to be feeding a fledgling. The young bird found balancing on the perch somewhat challenging and kept flapping its wings to say in place. It also couldn’t seem to figure out how to get seed directly.

On 7/8: There was a squirrel that tried to get seed from the feeder. The springs worked to shut off the seed holes, so the acrobatics were for naught.

On 7/9: The bird feeder camera captured the goldfinches which I also photographed with my camera (included in the 7/10 blog post). It was interesting to see the different angle of the action. The bird feeder camera didn’t start recording until the house finch was already gone.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Last of the day lilies from the flower bed. The deer got more of the day lily buds than I did. I cut the last stalk that survived because it was tangled in the branches of a nearby bush. The buds should open nicely in the vase on our breakfast table. They will be dark orange…. descendants of the bulbs by mother-in-law bought about 30 years ago.

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The two stems I cut a few days ago are blooming in the vase upstairs in my office. There are still several buds developing…should keep my office in fresh flowers for 3-4 more days.

Once the day lilies are gone, the front flowerbed is going to be all green. I thought I’d have black eyed susans but the deer have eat all the buds this year already! I’ll rely on the CSA cutting garden for the rest of the summer.

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Neighborhood Pond in the Early Morning – Part 1

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Our days have been hot and humid recently. I started on my walk just after 6 AM when the temperature was in the low 70s and the humidity was about 90%. My destination was the storm water retention pond in our neighborhood. The moon was still visible above the trees. The day lily leaves and Virginia creeper at the base of our oak looked very lush as I picked up sticks that had fallen on the driveway. I’ve learned to cut the day lily leaves after the bloom period so that they grow back fresh and lovely in August and into the fall. That job will be done in the next few weeks.

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I saw a black feather on the sidewalk along the way. Maybe from a crow?

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When I got to the pond, I heard frogs and red-winged black-birds but didn’t see them immediately. I took pictures of the calm pond…the humidity clouding the air at first – the reflections on one side of the pond looking hazy. Then, a short time later, some reflected color from a different angle that darkened the vegetation to silhouettes.

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I heard some splashing and then a bird larger than a red-winged blackbird flew up into a tree. My first thought was maybe a heron. I found it through the zoom on my camera. It was a Green Heron with a fish!

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It started moving to swallow the fish and this sequence is from just after the bird stilled after getting the positioned and swallowing.

The green herons have so many different ‘looks’ because of the way they can move their necks. There are times they don’t look all that much like a heron.

But then they stretch out their neck. Sometimes the way they hold up the feathers on the tops of their heads, they look a little like a roadrunner!

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I’ll post about everything else I saw at the pond tomorrow.