We had a beautiful, sunny winter day here, so decided to head to one of our favorite state parks for a morning of birding. South Llano River State Park is about 90 minutes from our home, and the temperature was 30 degrees when we set out and 32 degrees when we arrived! But the sun was shining and the wind was calm, so it was a perfect day to be out hiking and birding.
South Llano River State Park features four different birding blinds, each with a water feature and feeders. One of our last volunteer gigs was here, and we were out each morning around 7:00 to make sure that all of the feeders were filled by 8:00. Birders tend to be early birds, and photography is best in the early morning light.
So imagine our thoughts when we arrived at the first blind around 9:00 to find that the feeders had not been filled! We checked the next two blinds, and they'd also not been filled. We finally saw the hosts making their rounds at around 10:30, so we headed off for a hike to give them a chance to service all of the blinds. After our hike we came back to the blinds to find the birds happily feeding on the freshly placed seed.
We ended up seeing 31 species of birds, and here are some of the better pictures that I got. As always, you can click on a picture to get a larger, clearer version.
Winter is a great time to see various sparrows in Texas, and while they all seem like LBJ's (little brown jobs) they vary quite a bit.
The water features are popular, even in winter. This male House Finch was nice and bright.
A mixture of peanut butter, lard, and cornmeal appeals to birds that don't eat seed, like woodpeckers. That is what is smeared on this log feeder.
Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay is the western equivalent to the well known Blue Jay. It was interesting to see how their color seemed to change depending on if they were in the shade, or out in the bright sunlight.
Mark
Nice clear pictures.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite build is the mocking bird. I was on our patio today reading, and I heard a mocking bird start to sing. It sang for ~5 minutes, then moved on. I never saw it, but the variety and range of calls was wonderful to hear.
They are amazing vocalists! In cities they even mimic car alarms and other non-natural noises.
DeleteBuild = bird 😡
ReplyDeleteGotta love the phone guessing at what you meant to say...
DeleteThe details on the bird images are outstanding. I was wondering if you've considered copyrighting your bird photos, then I read this article that said they're automatically copyrighted, https://photographylife.com/7-things-all-photographers-need-to-know-about-copyright.
ReplyDeleteHey Rick - I decided early on not to worry about watermarks, copyrights, etc. Many do, but my feeling is that if someone wants to take an image and use it, they're going to do so. But it sounds like I am copyrighted anyway! Thanks for the info.
DeleteAlways interesting when someone follows you in a "job" and doesn't do it as well - at least in our own minds. Glad you were able to enjoy yourself.
ReplyDeleteWe particularly noticed a difference (even while we were there) between birders and non-birders doing that job. Teri and I were up early, cleaned the windows to the blinds, used all of the different types of seed and food available, etc. The non-birders doing the same job never even looked at the windows, often put out only one or two types of seed, with their top priority being to "not use too much", etc. I guess that when you use the blinds, you take more care with them!
DeleteGreat pictures, as always. Loved the comments back and forth too.
ReplyDeleteThanks Virginia. Always interesting to hear from other folks that are far away!!
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