Eagles!

I had a wonderful afternoon at a nearby neighbor's house today!

Some recent skies for Friday Skywatch

This is supposed to make up for my recent absence on the blog. Too much other stuff to do these days.

To see lots more skies, click HERE.

Three pictures from this week

A willow oak tree against the blue sky

Two white-tailed deer running across the front yard

A pine siskin and I check each other out.

Blue birds!

I had been doing some indoor photography just before supper and went down to the car to get something with my camera still hung around my neck. Good thing because I caught a glimpse of color out of the corner of my eye.

It was after six and there was no light so I put the ISO up to 1600 in order to see anything at all. Got a lot of graininess, but some nice behaviors. Here is Mr. having chased away a chickadee from the nesting box. Chickadees used it last year.

Checking out the insides

Back on top looking at Mr. chickadee.

You can just see Mrs. is inside the box

And there she is! But she sees me........

......and takes off.

They went up into the pecan tree this house is under and chattered away. I hope they win out over the chickadee, but even if they don't, there are other houses in the yard, just not as easy to observe as this one.

Next time I see them, I hope it's not at dusk.

Eagles in the skywatch

What's that in the sky?

Yay--it's a bald eagle (in an arty shot!)

This is better, now we can see it's a mature adult.

If you'd like to see more skies, click here where they are all listed.

Sorry I missed Wednesday and Thursday--and I was doing so well. But real live does occasionally interfere.

Pelicans

Another one of those nights where I scream at the blog. I had many more pictures for this series, but they kept coming up in a different order than I loaded them and I finally gave up with these few. It's bad enough having to load from the end to the beginning, but when I load 5,4,3,2,1 and then get 2,4,5,1, 3, it's infuriating. End of vent.

So anyway the Pitt Street Causeway is a long pier now out into Charleston Harbor that used to be a trolley from Mt. Pleasant to Sullivan's Island. Now it's a great place for fishing and birding and watching brown pelicans at work. They fly all around looking down at the water to see if there's a fish for the taking.

Sometimes they skin across the surface. I don't know why they don't touch with their wings.

The most fun is when they spot a fish and put on the brakes.

Then they begin the dive and gradually fold their wingss to gain speed

Till finally they are shaped like a missile

And into the water they go--hopefully to come up with a fish.

Here are a few pictures from the GBBC weekend.

There is a pileated woodpecker in there--can you see him?

I don't blame you--he kept inside the twigs mostly.

But once he looked right at me as if I were the paparazzi!

Look how much yellow the pine siskins are getting. I had more of them today too because it's cold tonight.

This red-bellied woodpecker can't get into the cage for the peanuts, but can stick its head through far enough to reach one.

I hadn't seen the hooded mergansers for over a week, so I was thrilled when three of them came up the creek at high tide.

Chipping sparrows were the only species I had good numbers of, but still only 63. Half of what I had last year.

And only one bluejay--he looked kind of sad.

Now it's off to put my GBBC report onto the site. I hope you all had great bird counts too. It's always fun! I added a couple of species to my February yard list too.

Wilson's snipe

For the first time ever, a Wilson's snipe was slightly visible long enough to take a picture or two--well, actually about twenty, but here are the usable ones.

Here is the whole scene with it in the middle.
Zoomed in a little and you can actually see it. The tips of their mandibles are very sensitive and they can flex them some. They probe the bottom for goodies to eat.

Such pretty patterns and that bit of rust coloring on the tail is a good ID when they fly.

These were taken at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge last week.

How are you coming with the bird count? It was drizzly here today so not so good for looking around the yard. I have 24 species now, but not big numbers on anything. It's supposed to rain again tomorrow too. Pooey.