World Bird Wednesday XXIII

                              Get Back

         Looking back over this long winter, now that spring is here, I thought I would pick a few pictures that would represent the early weeks of this transition.
   The waxwings were taken during an early spring snowstorm that my heavy-duty snow thrower barely budged.




As plentiful as cardinals are here near the 45 parallel they seem to be a tough bird to catch in an interesting pose. It would be a blast to finally get a good picture of one in flight. They hang tough all winter.

 

    I was leaving for work one morning in Detroit when the moon was just setting. There were blackbirds perched on the power wires making a racket. Spring was in the air and the sight caught my eye.

   The wires I imagine as a crazy music staff with the whole note moon and quarter note crow resting on the space above the top line suggesting a long G tone which is the original key of the Beatles song "Blackbird."
Such are the thoughts of a free associative mind!

There in the clutter you'll see the strange visitor we spotted yesterday in the alley across from the firehouse. One very bright firefighter remembered it was a Guinea-fowl before the Iphone jockey's could google the information up. Hooray for her. But what of the mystery? Has this African insect and seed eating bird also found the vacant lots of Detroit a perfect homesteading choice? If so, remember you heard it here first!

           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.


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!

World Bird Wednesday XXII

And It Stoned Me

"And it stoned me to my soul."
So sang Van Morrison way back when. The stone birds atop the Kean building in Detroit had me singing that old classic line all day long. Hmmmm. A bird with human eyes. While I don't think these sculptures would qualify for the gargoyle hall of fame, not that there is such a thing, to their credit they've done a sterling job protecting their perch for many a year.

What's this? Well just a Dark-eyed junco picture where you can actually see that dark little bead of an eye for a change. A rare accomplishment for me!

The star of my birding week was this strange backyard bird I spotted working the leaf litter. I bolted for my camera but all I managed was a muddy reference shot before the Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) sped away. It's a first time sighting for me thus worthy of a personal celebration! My research informed me that the southern variations have a white eye. Though I did not hear it, their common name comes from its unique "Tow-hee" voicing. "And it stoned me just like Jelly Roll!"       ;-)WBW

            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. 

  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!

City Chicken

    Here in the devastated East side neighborhoods of Detroit where arson fires have been burning up the housing stock for decades, the land has slowly changed character. Where endless neighborhoods of single family dwellings once housed the blue collar citizens that put the world on wheels now all that remains is the haunting skeleton of what was the fifth largest city in the United States. The wealth created from this Twentieth century manufacturing giant has dissipated and the latest economic downturn appears to be just another shovelful of dirt heaped on Detroit's virtual grave. I make my living helping to put out the fires that rage nightly in my old hometown and all of us who serve have seen the icons of our growing years go up in a literal column of thick dark smoke.
    As the dilapidated buildings slowly work their way through the snarled bureaucracy they're eventually torn down and their foundations are filled with dirt. In natures patient way a new ecology has come to dominate. Blocks of unmowed open fields strewn with wild bushes and fallen trees have made for the perfect conditions necessary to support what we affectionately call City Chicken, a bird you know as the Ring-necked pheasant. The pheasant is a tasty game bird, native to Eastern Asia, that came to North America in the 1880's to supplement stock for hunters whose favorite field prey, the partridge and quail, were diminishing in those years.

      The pheasant took well to the small family farms of early America whose 10 and 20 acre fields where bordered by hedges that gave cover for the nesting birds. In 1940 there where 190,000 farms in Michigan and by 1990 the number had shrunk to 60,000. The vital hedgerows where torn up to make way for the larger farm fields. Modern farming methods such as fall plowings and the early and often cuttings of hay fields also cut drastically into Ring-necked pheasant numbers in rural counties.

In the growing, tangled patchwork of neglected city blocks these tough birds compete successfully with the stray dogs, cats and rats that roam the mean streets. As Detroit depopulated from over two million residents when I was born in the 1950's to just over seven hundred thousand these days, the wily, opportunistic pheasant has found an unexpected sanctuary from the sportsman's shotguns and the farmers plows and chemicals. It seems that our 1.3 million population loss is, quite literally, their gain.

  

City Chicken is also the name of one of our favorite firehouse meals. It has been made at our engine house since it was opened in 1899. City chicken is a concoction made of veal and pork chunks pushed on a stick, breaded,  fried and than baked hot for an hour or two or three. It is usually served with mashed potatoes and gravy. Here's the recipe!

 Below in the distance sits the 112 year old quarters of Engine 23 with an open meadow now emerging from the old cityscape. There's City chicken in the oven of that hallowed building, and now City chickens in the field across the street too.

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!

World Bird Wednesday XX

    Monochromania

     I know that spring is still at least two weeks away and my Technicolor dreams of photographing colorful Baltimore orioles and Ruby Throated hummingbirds will have to wait awhile. The leaf buds on the hard woods haven't even pumped themselves up enough yet to shed their brown husks. Where is that thin pastel green wash that colors the tree line when true spring is at hand? Nowhere in sight. It is a bare, drab brown monochromatic landscape around these parts.
There are, happily, a few positive signs my monochromastic existence may soon come to an end as our late arriving thaw creeps along. The river is running fast and noisily over the rapids where an icy silence hung just a few weeks ago. The calls of the early migrators such as the Red Winged black birds are a welcomed new song and I swear I heard the monotones of the frog chorus the other night. If the sounds of spring have begun can the color be far behind?
    

   

      Excepting what nature offers I have been running down hawks again, scanning the bare tree tops for the hunkered down predators that wait for small rodents to stick their heads out from under the scattered snow banks. Soon enough the forest will leaf out again and hawks will be much harder to spot. I will miss the natural drama of their monochromatism when the greens come. Gladly, I'll share 'em while I can still get 'em.  I consider these dark and brooding pictures lucky catches because the center weighted auto-focus on my Canon lens loves to latch onto the high contrast background of branch and overcast sky instead of the cruising bird. Unless I'm very steady,  pictures of in-focus branches and a blurry bird are all to common. The Hooded Merganser below was working the Pine River just behind the house making for yet another majestic monochromatic moment. Yeah I know, it's monotonous. Such is the case when you've got a bad case of monochromania!

           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!