The Indomitable Chickadee
- The oldest banded Black-Capped Chickadee was recorded to have lived over 12 years.
- Chickadees need 10x more food in the winter than in the summer. They hide/store food that they don’t immediately eat and can remember over a thousand of their hiding spots.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172256649841.
#MarchMeetTheMakerDay5
#PhotographyI have always loved photography, especially coupled with bird watching. Before I got my Nikon D3000 and a telephoto lens, I used to “digiscope” and McGuyver a powerful zoom by shoving the lens of my little Fujifilm into the eyecup of my binoculars. It was awkward, but it worked!
These are some of my favorite shots of birds being magestic and adorable. There’s also some feathers, a nest and a cool spider. Have a lookie!
#wildlifephotography #marchmeetthemaker2018 #ornithology #birdingphotography #birding #pipingplover #bluebird #birdwatching (at Syracuse, New York)
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172247485668.
Red-breasted Nuthatch near the bird feeder at Audubon North Woods in Sandstone, Minnesota. #birds #birding #birdsofinstagram #nature #naturephotography #wildlife #wildlifephotography #audubonnorthwoods #audubonrelc #winterwitchcamp #bestbirdshots #redbreastednuthatch
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172238667016.
#224. Mountain Bluebird
Besides Prairie Falcon (which I ended up not seeing on this trip), Mountain Bluebird was the other species I was really hoping to see in the Cuyama Valley. It’s hard to find them anywhere else in the county, but small numbers of them winter there. Paul Lehman’s essential book Birds of Santa Barbara County says they have “mostly departed by mid-March”, but a user in eBird had reported a number of them on Wasioja Road a few days before, so I was hopeful.
I pulled onto the road in mid-morning, found a spot with bluebirds and started checking them out, but they were all Westerns. Nothing wrong with that, though; I’ll watch Western Bluebirds any chance I get. So I watched them, and the Horned Larks that were around (they were everywhere), and a few early migrant swallows that were swooping overhead, when I heard a bluebird calling from a nearby fence post, and there it was: my fifth and final county year bird of the day: Mountain Bluebird.
After working so hard to try to turn the Western Bluebirds into one it was exciting to see a bird with all the distinguishing features: pale blue and gray without a hint of red, narrower beak, and an overall longer, thinner profile with longer tail and wings.
Such a stylish bird.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172238244771.
sleg:
Tricolored Blackbirds – 2015
#223. Mine weren’t this easy; they were mixed in with the Red-winged Blackbirds and Brewer’s Blackbirds at a couple of my Cuyama Valley stops. But eventually I managed to pick out a few “trikes”. A nice lady came out from her house along State Highway 33 to ask if I needed anything after I’d spent about 20 minutes walking up and down the road in front of her house looking at the blackbirds in her trees and in the fields on either side. She didn’t mind me birdwatching, but apparently I was making her Jack Russell’s bark constantly, so I moved further away from the house.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172237842556.
#222. A juvenile bird was perched in a distant cottonwood, and I spent a long time trying to make it be a Prairie Falcon (which is one of the species I really wanted to see on my Cuyama trip). The bird had relatively long wings and tail; not falcon-long, maybe, but longer than the buteos I’m used to.
Fortunately it eventually flew off, letting me see it soaring as it headed north and allowing even my sketchy raptor-identification skills to kick in. Swainson’s Hawks are rare in Santa Barbara County; it felt special to see it.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172237660376.
Sage Thrasher (documentary)
Santa Cruz Flats, AZ, 1-16-17
#221. I was excited to see a Sage Thrasher on my Cuyama trip; they’re easier to find up there than in the south county, but they’re not necessarily easy.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172237356196.
Horned Lark
Pawnee National Grassland, CO
#220. I got tired of trying and failing to see Horned Larks in the Santa Ynez Valley, so I said screw it; I’m going to Cuyama, the wide-expanses cattle-grazing valley in the northeast corner of Santa Barbara County. Set the alarm for 4 a.m., got to Cottonwood Canyon Road just as it was getting light, and boom! First birds I saw were a pair of Horned Larks that flitted up to check me out (as some curious cows were already).
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172237271786.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172220245093.
O Jupiter,
Spare us thy wrath
But moreso,
Thy affections.
—
#febirdary #febirdary2018 #stocky #goldeneagle #eagle #mythology #art #illustration #planet #bird #acrylicink #ink #pencil (at Charlottesville, Virginia)
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172203933436.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Kejun Zhao
A series of illustrations for the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172178500636.
There is a wholesome air about Hollin. Much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.
–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2 Chapter 3
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172176042731.
Western Kingbird
#219. I saw the first of what ended up being eight of them that I counted, flitting from log to log on the beach in the flotsam that came down Carpinteria Creek in the storm. It had been all Cassin’s Kingbirds around here since the beginning of the year, and at first I assumed that’s what the bird was, but then it flashed its white outer feathers, and that made me look closer at the throat, and yup; it was gray without the contrast-y malar patch of the Cassin’s.
The WEKI’s have officially arrived. 😀
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172175282826.
Black and White
Warbler
#218. A male, creeping along the limbs of a big sycamore this morning at the 8th Street footbridge, right where Eve reported it before the storm. Yeah!
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172174953781.
They call its family the iron-hearted myrtles.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172171053935.
Lavender Carnations
Watercolor and Gouache
2015, 9″x 12″
Carnations, Dianthus
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/172144972166.
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