Grackle shares birdbath with toad...

 Photos by BarrytheBirder

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BarrytheBirder

2019 Audubon Photographic Contest

Photo: Michael Schulte / Audubon Photography Awards

The photo above, by Michael Schulte was the Plants for Birds winner in the 2019 Audubon Photography Awards in San Diego, California, US.   Orioles build hanging nests, weaving plant fibres for  lightweight but durable structures.   The Hooded Oriole (Icterus cucullatus) finds long strong palm fibres  to be excellent building material.   It often attaches its nest under a California fan palm leaf.
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BarrytheBirder

2019 Audubon Photography Awards...

Photo: Melissa Powell / Audubon Photographic Awards

Melissa Powell won an Honourable Mention Award at the 2019 Audubon Photographic Awards with this photo of Great Blue Herons during a mating display at the Wakodahatchee wetlands, at Delray Beach, Florida, US.

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BarrytheBirder

2019 Audubon Photographic Awards...

Photo: Elizabeth Boehm / Audubon Photo Awards

Elizabeth Boehm was the professional prize winner in the 2019 Audubon Photography Awards with this action-filled photo of Greater Sage Grouse males displaying on a lek in Pinedale, Arizona, US.

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BarrytheBirder

2019 Audubon Photographic Awards...

Photo: Kevin Ebi / Audubon Photo Awards

Photographer Kevin Ebi captured a Bald Eagle and a Red Fox in a dramatic struggle over a rabbit, on San Juan Island National Historical Park in Washington, US.  The photo was awarded an Honourable Mention in this year's Audubon Photography Awards.

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BarrytheBirder

2019 Audubon Photography Awards

Photo: Kathrin Swoboda, 2019 Audubon Photo Awards

The Grand Prize Winner in the 2019 Audubon Photography Awards was Kathrin Swoboda, with this photo of an exhaling Red-wing Blackbird taken at Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria, Virginia, US.

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BarrytheBirder

Another Osprey nest found nearby...

Photos by BarrytheBirder

Just a week or so after showing the location of a local Osprey nest, which was new to me, I have come across another one (see photo above), just south of the King-Vaughan townline on Dufferin Street.   I could not tell if it was being used by a family of birds but I will now be certainly looking for Ospreys each time I go by.   You can't have too may of these formidable fish-eaters around as far as I am concerned.   Pictured below is an Osprey, with a 5' wingspan, that I photographed in the parking lot at Seneca College/Eaton Hall a couple of years ago.   I am left wondering if an Osprey built the nest on a platform that was a functional, operating piece of equipment for the telecommunications tower, or whether whoever maintains these towers is now adding platforms specifically for nesting Ospreys as an alternative to the big birds interfering with sensitive equipment.   It's a thought.

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BarrytheBirder

New Chinese world heritage sites...

Photo: Li Xiang / Xinhua / Barcroft Media

An aerial photo shows egrets resting on top of trees at the Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve in Yangcheng, Jiangsu Province, eastern China.   On June 26, 2019, Unesco added China's migratory bird sanctuaries, along the coast of the Yellow Sea -Bohai Gulf (Phase 1) to the list of world heritage sites.

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BarrytheBirder

Bringing attention to species at risk...

Photo: Tony Margiocchi / Barcroft Media

A nightingale shares the water with blue tits at the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist temple in Milton Keynes.  The WWF and iNaturalist are launching Seek, an app designed to encourage children to get outside and discover local Biodiversity.   The launch comes at a time where more than 1m plant and animal species are at risk of extinction, according to a UN report. 

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BarrytheBirder

Endless flamingos in Turkey...

Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

A drone photo shows flamingos on Lake Tuz, one of the most important centres for flamingos incubate, in the province of Konya in Turkey.

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BarrytheBirderEndless flamingos

Open wide...

Photo: Sylvain Thomas / AFP / Getty Images

A volunteer from the Goupil Association feeds young birds with tweezers at the Laroque Wildlife Hospital in southern France.   The hospital received and treated hundreds of animals affected by the unprecedented heat wave in June of this year.

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BarrytheBirder

Silhouetted egrets...

Photo: Chaideer Mahyuddin / AFP / Getty Images

Two large egrets take flight and challenge each other, as others rest on top of mangrove trees during an imminent sunset at Kajhu Beach, on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.
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BarrytheBirder

A large goose with pink feet...

Photo:

Greylag Geese (Anser anser) forage for scraps on  a debris-covered beach at Lindoya Island off south-eastern Oslo, in Norway.   Highly attractive geese, without a doubt.
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BarrytheBirder 

Classic seaside image in England...

Photo: Ian Forsythe / Getty Images

Dozens of seabirds fly among breaking waves, at sunrise, on the beach at Saltburn-by-the-Sea in northeast Yorkshire.
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BarrytheBirder

'All aboard'

Photo: Biju Boro / AFP / Getty Images

Cattle Egrets sit on a one-horned rhinoceros in the Kaziranga National Park in Assam, northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas.
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BarrytheBirder

A prolific breeding and nesting ground...

Photo: Danny Lawson / PA

Gannets nest at the RSPB nature reserve at Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, UK.  More than 1/4 million seabirds flock to the chalk cliffs to find a mate and raise their young.

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BarrytheBirder

Birds with epicurean tastes...

Photo: Axel Heinken / AFP / Getty Images

House Sparrows are seen helping themselves to leftovers of a tarte flambe in a cafe in Hamburg, Germany.

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BarrytheBirder

First backyard Flicker in 28 years...

Photos by BarrytheBirder

What took you so long?

The last time a Flicker (Colaptes auratus) showed up in my backyard was 28 years ago, on September 8, 1991.  Now I have a second sighting, with photos this time.   Flickers normally like wide open spaces, not small suburban backyards.   This large woodpecker, that likes to feed on the ground, eating ants, is 12" long and is quite attractive, with unique markings.

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BarrytheBirder

Osprey nest discovered near hamlet of Snowball...

Photos by BarrytheBirder

Let me begin this blog entry by apologizing for the out-of-focus photo above.   This large Osprey nest is perched atop a very high communications tower, at the top of a large hill, in the middle of a large farm, near to where I live.   The shot is the best I could do with my 300mm lens.   But the image of the raptor is not important, in and of itself, but the fact I have discovered this location is very gratifying for me as a local birder.  In the last few years I had lost track of four Osprey nesting sites in King Township.   All four nests had been abandoned or destroyed.   A tragedy if you are an Osprey admirer like me.   But now I know that one or more of the big birds are nearby, I can once again look forward to seeing them up close somewhere and getting photos like the one below, which I took nearby a few years ago.

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BarrytheBirder  

How much climate change evidence do we need?

Photo: Suhaimi Sulaiman / Getty Images

Stephen Moss, writing in The Guardian, says Cattle Egrets, birds once so exotic they were rarely seen north of the Mediterranean Sea, are now nesting in a heronry near his home in Somerset, England.   Flocks of them often gather in nearby fields with Jerseys and Holsteins.   He states they look quite at home on the English side of the Channel - which nowadays they apparently are.   The small white herons, adorned in orange breeding-plumage, are just one of many species of waterbird to colonize southern Britain in the past decade, as a result of climate change.   They include the Little Egret, which has bred in Somerset since the mid-90s, and the Great White Egret, which nested on the Avalon Marshes less than a decade ago.  Egrets are hard to ignore of course, and even people with little interest are beginning to notice the elegant white birds in their midst.

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BarrytheBirder

1st year female Baltimore Oriole hunting caterpillars...

Photos by BarrytheBirder

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BarrytheBirder

Recording human impact...

Photo: J. Henry Fair / Papadakis

Pelicans are seen on the beach at the Deveaux Sanctuary in the US. state of South Carolina.   The image is part of On The Edge: Combahee to Wynyah, by the photographer and environmentalist J. Henry Fair, who draws attention to the tragic effects of human impact on the planet's coastlines.

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BarrytheBirder

A beak-full of trouble...

Photo: Owen Humphreys / PA

A puffin (a.k.a. the common puffin) is seen holding fishes in its beak is chased by an Arctic Tern on the Farne Islands, off the coast Northumberland, in northeast England.

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BarrytheBirder

Cute and beautiful...

                                                                            Photo: Phichak / Alamy Stock Photo

A Yellow-bellied Fairy Fantail (Chelidorhynx hypoxanthus) is seen perched on a tree branch in Thailand.   It is also found in Vietnam and Myanmar, the Indian subcontinent, the Himalayas and other portions of southeast Asia.

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BarrytheBirder

Goldfinches do converge at our feeders...

Photo by BarrytheBirder

The number of American Goldfinches at our backyard bird feeders has always been big throughout the year, for many years.   The photo above gives evidence of their prolificness.   I've arrived late at some Project Feederwatch data from The Cornell Lab and Bird Studies Canada that shows just how abundant they are compared to the top 25 feeder birds in this part of our world.   While Black-capped Chickadees visit the most sites, on average, their group size at each site is not large.   Meanwhile House Sparrows have larger group sizes at the feeders they frequent, but rank below 50% on number of sites visited.   The third category is called the Feederwatch Abundance Index and the American Goldfinch is at the top of that category.   What a joy to see masses of this special bird.

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BarrytheBirder     

Do Ravens really have beaks that big? They sure do...

 Photos by Nancy and Bob Wallace

My brother Bob and his dear wife Nancy, who live just north of Parry Sound, were introduced to a tame Raven recently and came away with a few pictures of their new friend.   Their impression of this bird, named 'Bella', is one of amazement, because of its vocabulary, friendliness, curiosity, intelligence and keenness for shiny gifts.   Bob gave Bella a couple of coins which she promptly took and buried a short distance away.   Bella lives with a family of folks who are acquaintances of Bob and Nancy, or just maybe the acquaintances live with the beguiling Bella.

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BarrytheBirder

What's that on your beak, Mr. Goldfinch?

Photo by Barry Wallace

I've never noticed an American Goldfinch before with the uniquely coloured and patterned beak, like the male above.   American Goldfinch beaks are usually a somewhat pale, pinkish-orange colour, but the one above has black bars on its beak ... somewhat interesting.   Photo taken at one of our backyard feeders.
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BarrytheBirder

Biodiversity hot-spots unprotected...

Photo: Andrew Coleman / NG / Alamy

An elephant seal and a petral chick are seen on South Georgia Island, a British overseas territory.   The UN patron for the oceans blames England's Boris Johnson for failing to protect biodiversity hot-spots, such as South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, when he was foreign secretary. 

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BarrytheBirder

British researchers say...

Photo: DGD Images / Alamy

A robin perches on a spade handle in a garden on a rainy day in Lixwm, northern Wales.   Researchers have said this past week that when European robins are subjected to human-produced noise, their behaviour changes.

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BarrytheBirder

An oriole of Asia...

Photo: Kim Jae-Sun /EPA

A Black-naped Oriole (Oriolus chinensis) feeds its chicks in Namyangju, South Korea.  This passerine bird in the oriole family is found in many parts of Asia and it is one of about 60 species in the world.

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BarrytheBirder

Female Baltimore Orioles...

Photos by BarrytheBirder

I got so excited at having many Baltimore Orioles in the backyard over the last few weeks, that I realize now that the pictures I put in this blog space were all male birds.   I did of course take pictures of females and I am now giving them equal opportunity to show their own beauty.

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BarrytheBirder

A perilous situation...

Photo: Ross Henry / Alamy

The world's fattest parrot, the endangered Kakapo, could be wiped out by fungal infection.   Seven of the birds, native to New Zealand, have died, with just 142 adults remaining.

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BarrytheBirder

Big nest for a big chick...

Photo: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

A 6-week-old White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), also known as a Sea Eagle,  sits on its nest at Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull, Scotland. It has just been vaccinated.   The White-tailed Eagle is the largest raptor in the United Kingdom, as well as in many other parts of the world.  200 years ago is was extirpated in the UK., but made a remarkable come-back.

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BarrytheBirder