When someone sees the specs and says, “Hey, you must know about birds, right? I saw this really weird bird the other day it had..” it’s always a northern flicker.
Here, it’s a Jay. And if it is a “really weird call” it will be a Great Tit.
Are english jays corvids (crow family) like ours?
Yes they are, and I’ll echo Devondancer’s remark. Here it IS always a Jay. Once in a while it’s a Grebe or a Hoopooe, but most of the time, it’s a Jay.
Around here is southeastern Virginia it is likely going to be a Painted Bunting during the winter months. We have more in the state this year than ever recorded. Photos rarely do it justice.
I like that red malar on the red shafted flicker.
Roseate spoonbill for us . . . and they nearly always think the creature was the victim of dye-wielding pranksters . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseate_Spoonbill
I’ve seen these handsome things in my yards on a couple of occassions.
Wow, I didn’t know they had Painted Buntings in Southern VA.
DWest I am not joking when I am asking this. Is the animal in your avatar a sheep or a dog?
(Perhaps a sheep dog 
)
Oh sorry the red-crested bloke is a Pileated Woodpecker.
I don’t have a backyard, but I’ve seen a pileated woodpecker in Vancouver, a mile or so from my apartment. Most laypeople who see a pw can get as far as recognising that they’ve seen a woodpecker of some kind. The automatic flicker rule applies when they can get no further than ‘it’s a bird..’ They have no idea that what they’re looking at was also a woodpecker.
Unfortunately, in the last ten to twenty years I have hardly seen any flickers. There numbers seemed to have dwindled here.
We have Painted Buntings in several spots around the state, including the mountains, this winter. One of my greatest certainties during the winter months is that at some point I will identify a yellow-rumped warbler,we call them butter-butts, as at least three different other highly unlikely species.
My avatar is a bird dog, and she’s not sheepish about anything. She is an Irish Water Spaniel and the cutest dog on this planet. Right now she is watching Cardinals, chickadees, white throated sparrows, house finches, a red-bellied, cowbirds, blue jays, goldfinches, kinglets, white-breasted nuthatches, titmice, robins, waxwings, song sparrows, turkey vultures and ring-billed gulls. Robins seem to be her favorite.
These are the ones that get non-bird-oriented people talking around here:
Western Tanager
And so do these:
Lilac-crowned Amazon (we’ve got a flock of wild ones in Santa Barbara)
I want to see a Painted Bunting.
Around here this summer, it was Orieles. The orange portions, as shown in the picture, were more brown and they looked more like humongous baby robins.
Orchard orioles are brown and black.
Never seen one in BC, but I’ve seen the occasional indigo bunting in Ontario. In the bunting family, it’s the sibling that inherited all the class:
Painted buntings would show up occasionally at Point Pelee in the spring. Never know what you’re going to see at Point Pelee, I missed more than one exam due to Pelee Fever.
Kites surprise people around here. They are not numerous enough to be called common and the way they fly catches peoples attention.
Another cool thing about flickers is their call. People also wonder what they hear and they have a bold delivery.
Speaking of birds, for the past month, we’ve had a crazy song sparrow that can’t help himself from pounding into car mirrors, grills, and even the window behind my monitor here at work. I’ve been playing online calls just to further confuse it.
I wish to post a link here but there is a back story. I work in a retirement community that is in a beautiful valley with only one road into it. Since 1964, all pets have been leashed or kept indoors. Subsequently, we have songbirds like no other place, including state parks. You never see outdoor cats here. A beloved resident has a Flickr site with his bird photos, many taken right here in the valley. He has recently taken a final turn downwards in health and had to be moved to assisted care. All of his gear has been sold. I hope you will enjoy these photos; say a little prayer for Joe Oliver while you look them over. Word is that the site may not be up that much longer.
Stucking a paper cut in the silhouette of a raptor to windows that draw a lot of bird collisions helps to cut down the number. Birds recognise and avoid those shapes instinctively.
When he gave us our air-rifles Atticus wouldn’t teach us to shoot. Uncle Jack instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn’t interested in guns. Atticus said to Jem, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever hear Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “You’re father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mocking bird.”
First of all those photos of Joe Oliver’s are very nice, my best wishes for him.
Birds have fairly complex lives. They have all types of predators, terrestrial and aerial. They have all kinds of competitors, their own species and other species, who are using all the same resources. What we don’t know about birds is really phenomenal when one thinks about the length of time man has been studying birds. I am particularly adept at replicating bird calls with just my mouth and fingers. When I was younger I could literally call anything from a kinglet to a raptor within few feet from me. Some smaller species I could actually persuade to land on my hands and arms.
At that time few of us actually thought about the ramifications of this type of behavior. I birded several times for years with the head of the sound lab at Cornell at the time, and we used recorded songs to attract birds all the time. The fact is it was a mistake. It distracts bird from the very real business of surviving. It makes them use energy they can ill afford to lose. It dramatically increases their susceptibility to predation and decreases their value for breeding. In many places it is now illegal and it is always unethical.
I am a licensed bird bander, and a professional ornithologist, I can’t begin to describe some of the stupid things we use to do in our profession that we would never dream of doing now. The carnage I have wrought has truely been a terrible thing. All national and state/provincial ornithological organizations have guidelines to help individuals enjoy birds without endangering them. I would encourage everyone who has an interest, however causal, to read the guidelines for their locale.