World Bird Wednesday XXI

  What's Up?

It's been a fun and productive week chasing birds this week. The boys were up to the Pine River for a few days and they keep the joint jumpin'. The drums were pounding and the guitars were banging. The birds came by for the party too. They were treated to the best sunflower seed hearts, a fresh suet ball, and of course peanuts.
Everybody had a great time!

    The Turkey vultures are back after spending the winter where the snows can not hide their grizzly meal du jour. They'll be around here all summer effortlessly riding the thermals in great circles high above our heads.

    It has been a long standing debate, do vultures predominantly smell their prey or see it?  Harvard Entomologist P. J. Darlington Jr. in 1930 weighed in on the question with these observations taken from Familiar Birds.

" In November, 1926, some dead fish were put out near Harvard House to attract beetles, but were stolen by Turkey Buzzards the first day. The bait had been hidden under fairly large stones, and since it was placed beside a garden where people were frequently moving about, there is no reason to suppose that the birds were attracted by my actions. They may, indeed, have smelled the fish, but it seems just as likely that they saw the insects which collected and which would have given the set away to any intelligent human being."

Later research has suggested that Turkey vultures, unlike the vast majority of birds, can smell well enough to detect food during low level flight. Of course vultures possess outstanding vision and rarely will you spot one wearing glasses.  By the way, some of us like to call these birds Turkey buzzards like the Professor did in the above quote but that is incorrect. They are in fact vultures. Road kill is often referred to as TV dinners by knowledgeable school children here in Michigan. The TV standing for Turkey Vulture in this case. That would be quite correct indeed.

One of my goals this summer is to collect some Belted kingfisher pictures. This quest got off to an unexpectedly fast start when I caught sight of the "Little Killer" by a pond. I usually don't see kingfishers until the water level drops on the river later in the summer. Maybe I've found a kingfisher hot-spot or perhaps I'll find it was just a random sighting. My eyes are wide open and so we shall see!

         Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds. The Blogosphere connects like minded people from around our planet like no other technology can do. World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.

You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS.


                                                   
 
#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/


#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!

You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

          The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs where you can view their beautiful posts.


                        Come on it's your turn!