Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Birds In The Yard Today

This here's the welfare mockingbird last November, got hooked on the suet block and never left, got so tame she'll go inside my car and inside the front door, just now her and her main squeeze had sex about ten feet from me. Once ya get on the public dime everything goes to Heck.



More hummingbirds at my feeder now, plain green female/young black-chins, which means they have brung off broods or two, most of these being young of the year. This year was unusual in that I had a regular male black-chin. The males defend display courts, and actually wear themselves out more than the females do laying eggs and raising young. Ain't seen the male in about a week, which likely means he's done for the year and has gone back south.

Far fewer great-tailed grackles breeding along my street this year, and none in the trees in my yard, dunno what to make of that. I have house sparrows of course, no starlings this year, and an occasional Bewick's wren.

Ain't a tree in San Antonio anymore that doesn't have one or more pairs of white-winged doves in it, they have become so super-abundant that they have chased off all the mourning doves and inca doves where I'm at. Here's one on my front step just about six feet from me and the dog, which has become weary of running them off. This one nest about 40 feet from the step in a tree over my driveway. On this one visit it swallowed TWENTY EIGHT bits of dog food, then flew back up into the tree to turn 'em into crop milk I'd guess. If I park wrong it will repay my kindness by crapping on my car.



We always have swifts around, which means someone around here has a chimney. What these things up on the wire as seen from my house are purple martins. This many means it has been a good year for them.



Centuries ago purple martins got co-opted by the Indians to a point that the eastern race will only nest around around humans, almost always in houses or gourds put up for the purpose. The Indians did this because they liked 'em and because martins chased crows away from their crop fields which is why Indians didn't need to put out scarecrows. Settlers took over the practice and as the numbers of settlers increased and put out nesting gourds and houses so did the number of purple martins.

My particular neighborhood was put in place sixty years ago in the '60's when people had yards and put up bird houses, including purple martin houses, these usually made of aluminum. Nobody puts up purple martin houses anymore but enough is still left standing that we still have martins. Only catch from a purple martins perspective is that they are dragonfly specialists and dragonflies require water, whereas around here the climate is only marginally wet enough most years and not at all in others. Dry years almost no martins bring off young here, this year must have been good. These martins will be gone in a week or two, wandering back to South America, following dragonfly swarms all the way.