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Fascinate me. From watching 40 hummingbirds at the feeders in the summer, to a dozen goldfinches and cardinals right now. I saw a flock of 40 or so white pelicans circle the house not 60 feet up yesterday. Watched 2 bobwhites scurry from one bunch of brush to another in the backyard yesterday morning and I see wood ducks everyday on my place.

I don't remember the last time I didn't hear at least 1 owl, if not a few and I just watched a bald eagle go by.


Yep, birds fascinate me.

Me too, working on the water lets me see a wide variety of species. I always have my field guide with me and am absolutely giddy when I ID a species I've never seen before. Like the Bonaparte gulls that hang out at Bald Head Island.

Sounds like you're in a good spot. Have you put up any [b][color:#3333FF]wood duck boxes[/color][/b] yet..? Might not be too late...

I had two large flocks of snow geese merge into one group over our house yesterday afternoon.

The spring migration has started, reports from Grand Island are that the Sandhill Cranes are just starting to arrive along the Platte River.

I live in a big migratory zone for raptors and song birds.

I keep my Silbey's bird guide in my pack.

feeding 30 or so gold finches, quail, chickadees all winter. had a few Huns and chukar by the house this morning.

Saw a shrike yesterday and a saw whet owl.

I've been facinated by birds all my life.In my younger days I was offered a scholarship to Cornell University to study ornithology.I ended up turning it down,upstate New York did not appeal to an eighteen year old intent upon chasing British Columbia moose,mulies and mallards.This winter just from the porch I've seen goshawks,pine grosbeaks,barred owls,mountain chickadees and all of the other usual winter residents.I never tire of watching them. Monashee

Me too!
They are pretty crazy, as well as crazy smart.
Been whacking some crows lately and the resulting chaos never gets old.

Good idea

No water around the house, no wood ducks.

Watching the crows chase the big old barred owl around my neighbor hood a couple times a weeek this year, I've been tempted to take the pellet gun out and bust one, but that isn't legal in my area.

I love watching birds. Our house is about fifty feet up over the St. Lawrence River. I never get tired of watching the waterfowl (until it freezes.) This year, besides all the duck species, we had a couple of groups of swans of some sort hanging around. Saw a bald eagle today, out over the ice, and the wife and I saw one the other day when walking the dogs. I love the little birds, too. It's woods all around the house and we have more species than I can think of at the moment. Nothing quite as cool as seeing a wood duck perched up in a tree....

My grandfather use to goose hunt on the St. Lawrence somewhere NW of Potsdam, of course that was in the 1920's.

I threw out some bird feed a few days ago .

Not much here yet.

Juncos, sparrows, crows, nuthatches, cardinals and of course the dreaded squirrels seemed to enjoy it.
It's very early in the year here though.

Put some suet up and nary a taker yet.

My brother is getting his trees mauled by a couple pileated woodpeckers. Massive destruction. Lol

Pileated woodpeckers are very cool birds. I haven't seen one in several years.

Yeah they are uber cool.

I'd put them in my top five. I don't think they're very plentiful anywhere.

I get them in my yard, I love to watch them fly.

I've always been fond of birds as well. Growing up our pastor was an avid birder and a great artist. He would do chalk drawings for the kids during church with a little lesson to go along with it. I was one of the few kids that would know what kind of bird he was drawing. I had gotten a field guide in Yellowstone on a camping trip there and read it cover to cover when I was a kid. I think it was for kids IIRC.

I have downloaded a birding field guide app on my phone. There are a couple of good ones available. I wouldn't call myself a birder for sure and don't spend time specifically to go watch them but enjoy them on outdoor outings and am on the lookout when out and about just to see what I can see.

My wife and I enjoyed the movie that just came out with Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson about birding called "the Big Year". It was a good fuunny look into the kind of people that are really into it.

Unless you're talking big birds over wide open spaces, most bird watching is done with your ears.

Pretty cool to be able to walk through the woods pretty much identifying everything that calls as effortlessly as you recall an old song from just a few notes.

I teach big city and I've many times taught classrooms full of city kids thirty local bird calls in just a few classes using this...

http://www.thayerbirding.com/

In fact bird calls carry so much information with them I've always wondered about lurking Indians communicating with bird calls.

If those calls weren't exactly right for the time, season, habitat and location using them would be a red flag to those who knew that an ambush was about to go down. If the calls WERE exactly right, then a lot of ambushes must've been sprung too early by actual woodpeckers and such

In fact I suspect that the Indians from long familiarity in the woods habitually ID'd calls (which is something you can't avoid doing if you know 'em), and were alert to the info they contained.

Case in point; chickadees. Resident flocks of chickadees in the woods are about the closest thing we have to troops of monkeys: They move in groups, they constantly communicate, and they pay attention to what goes on in their territory, alerting their flock mates to danger.

So if I were laying out in ambush for an enemy, the bird most likely to take note of the fact, perch over my head, and sound the alarm would be a chickadee, if only for a few moments, see...

http://phys.org/news4716.html

Sure enough, when I looked it up, I found this concerning the Cherokees....

http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TheBirdTribes-Cherokee.html

The chickadee (Parus carolinensis), and the tufted titmouse, (Parus bicolor), utsu'`g�, or u'st�t�, are both regarded as news bringers, but the one is venerated as a truth teller while the other is scoffed at as a lying messenger, for reasons which appear in the story of N��yunu'w� (q. v.).

When the ts�k�lil�' perches on a branch near the house and chirps its song it is taken as an omen that an absent friend will soon be heard from or that a secret enemy is plotting mischief.

Many stories are told in confirmation of this belief, among which may be instanced that of Tom Starr, a former noted outlaw of the Cherokee Nation of the West, who, on one occasion, was about to walk unwittingly into an ambush prepared for him along a narrow trail, when he heard the warning note of the ts�k�lil�', and, turning abruptly, ran up the side of the ridge and succeeded in escaping with his life, although hotly pursued by his enemies.


Birdwatcher

We see (and certainly hear) them each summer at our place up in Ontario. They're huge and sound like a jackhammer in a tree. Very cool birds.

There's a cove I've been paddling a canoe into up there since I was a kid. Sometimes I sit for hours on end. There's everything from kingfishers, families of loons, wood ducks, mallards, terns, eagles, etc. I've even witnessed a few huge pike feeding on the ducklings there. One of the few places I'm totally at peace.

We took the oldest Grandaughter out for a ride on the quad today. I came over a rolling hill and right square in the trail about fifty yards in front of me was a Golden Eagle. No Camera on the quad. And I would not have had time to deploy it, had it been there.

But it was a thrill to watch that majestic predator rise from the ground.

Later I showed the younger guys how us old men can still smash clays on the side of the next ridge. I used the 6x284 for that.