Wild Side Ornithology Club

[freedombecki]

Range: Australia

Egg: (Wikimedia, Emu Egg File), Attribution: Author, Tamatauenga



Emu:

Image Credits: A Matter of Flight Dot Com

A good profile on emus is at switchzoo's Animal Facts, which says:

Emu, Dromaius novaehollandiae

Bird. The emu is Australia's largest bird, standing about 2 meters (6 feet) tall, and weighing up to 54 kg (120 lb). Emus cannot fly but they are fast runners - up to 48 km (30 mi) per hour. Surprisingly, they are also strong swimmers. Some scientists consider emus to be living dinosaurs because their bones and joints are similar to dinosaurs'. Their ability to store fat allows them to go without food for long periods of time. Emus can defend themselves with tremendously powerful forward kicks. They eat great quantities of caterpillars, grasshoppers, and masses of the burrs that tangle sheep wool, which makes them helpful to farmers

The emu lifespan in the wild is thought to be from 5- 10 years, and predators/threats are: Dingoes, eagles, dogs, cats, non-native foxes, and humans. Lizards eat eggs.

Diet of the wild emu includes: Flowers, fruits, seeds, shoots, large insects (caterpillars are a favorite), lizards, and small rodents. They also swallow large pebbles to grind up food in their gizzards.

There's a product made from emu oil called "that blue stuff." Those who use the original product can actually chase away the pain of arthritis, and some claim they were cured of arthritis after using just a few rub-ins. I use it to soothe muscle pain of fibromyalgia. It sure is a nice fix to reduce some muscular pains from my disease, and I got rid of what felt like bone pain (which is arthritis).

Thanks to the easing of pain I have enjoyed from "that blue stuff" I became very much a fan of emus.

 

[freedombecki]

I have the Cornell Ornithology website earmarked in favorites, and occasionally, I like to visit and see what they're talking about, what great pictures someone took of a very beautiful creature, songs, etc. Today, they offered something they call Bird Song Hero. I will probably miss every single one of them, because we have so many birds in the trees out front, I'm not sure I know who's saying what in the hundreds of languages there are out there, which change in a specie for "chow's on," "I just flew in," "hawk near," "my territory," and "there's no better lover than me, me, me!" So maybe there's hope that by playing Bird Song Hero game, in spite of missing all of them, someday I'll start recognizing voices in what seems like cacophony. Want to play? It's here: Bird Song Hero tutorial page

The new, visual way to learn bird songs.
Train your brain to recognize over 50 bird songs with the Bird Song Hero matching game.
Listen closely to featured songs and match each with the correct spectrogram visualization. You’ll be harnessing the power of the visual brain to help you identify the unique qualities of each song and commit sound patterns to memory.
Bird Song Hero is a fun way to practice the key skills you need to ID all the bird songs you’re curious about.

Hope it helps someone who, like me, has a lot to learn about birds.

 

[Mr. H.]

I dig birds.

And quilts.

 

[asaratis]

Berry College Bluebirds on USTREAM: May 28, 2014 Update: Bluebirds are once again nesting in our bluebird box. We expect to see eggs at any time. We hope t...

How'd you like to have to feed these four gaping mouths all day long?

 

[freedombecki]

Blessed be Pinterest and this little cutie:

Am still unable to post from my computer for some reason not known to me.

Anyway, there are always several tufted titmouse tribe members around the morning birdfeeder here, when it is full to the brim.

 

[freedombecki]

[ame=http://youtu.be/uDBtDh9Y2as]Beautiful Birds 1 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[freedombecki]

[ame=http://youtu.be/3jWv7jHLUnc]Beautiful Birds 2 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Spoonman]

 

[asaratis]

Worth watching...twice!

 

[asaratis]

Don't forget to feed the birds!​

 

[Treeshepherd]

Biggie Smalls got his music career started on the street, where he dominated in rap contests. One guy would lay down rhythm and a lyric, and then his opponent would rif off of that in an insulting way.

It turns out, some birds do the same thing. A marsh warbler might say, "tweety tweet whistle twoot tweet". And the other warbler is like, "tweety tweet? Twoot tweet whistle tweet!"

What the first warbler is saying is something like," I got all the riches and all the fine bitches, and my crib ain't fo no finches".
And the second bird says, "I ain't no finch but you tweets be like parakeets and my hos be like flamingos."
Something like that. They're just rapping all day, trying to impress the ladies.
New Scientist Short Sharp Science Blog Nature s best rapper - New Scientist

 

[beautress]

A song sparrow

A song sparrow nest of eggs:

 

[beautress]

The Audubon society has a really wonderful group of the songs of the song sparrow (and a whole lot more information than I could bring here)

Oh, I can't bring a link here. Sorry. No wonder nothing worked here before. I posted as freedombecki. As I said, I'm older than dirt with a memory to match. lolol

Well, for what it's worth, Just bing or google "song sparrow" or Audubon organization, and you will find a wonderful page with several mp3 files or whatever you call them nowadays on the lower screen toward the right side on their song sparrow page. And I'm sorry I posted a "sneaky" link, which I didn't know was not appreciated. Plz forgive me, all the powers that be here.

 

[beautress]

Common Grackles

Found lots of pictures of grackles in the search engine along with a plethora of sound bytes. They're squeaky, but not as loud as a Mynah Bird nor even a crow. They are about, well, a little less than Blue Jays. It's fun to watch them collect around cars at the local Walmart parking lot, where all trees were removed a couple of years ago due to hundreds of them nesting there. They took out the trees, so not as many of them visit, but the ones I saw a few mornings ago were likely on their migration path to warmer climates. These birds were healthy and happy looking, and I felt so bad I didn't have so much as a piece of popcorn to share with them. Well, maybe the next time if the manager's not out and about, looking.

All those smilies, and not a single one of them is a grackle...As I recollect, during the summertimes we lived in Wyoming, these odd little black birds that were too shiny to be crows, half of which had tails longer than their big bodies, though they weren't as big as crows nor as small as red-winged (and other) blackbirds. They were grackles, and the ones with long tails are known as boat-tailed grackles. For some reason, they didn't get into each others way, coexisted, and all, but wound up at the same roadside picnic ground near that big rock a few miles west of Casper, Wyoming, where we lived for at least 35 years, all told. Oh, the name of the rock was Independence Rock. It's been almost 10 years since we left the Equality State to retire in rural Texas, where it is warm as many months of the year as it was for cold months in Wyoming.
I'm just having a little fun until I have passed the 2-day bar to send links to bird pictures. I have to remember they put wild birds out in the garage here at US Message Board. Us bird lovers know our birds we see are pets, only they choose when they come and go,

Well, nite-nighty, all bird lovers, even if our dear little birdies have to be cooped up here in this ol' garage area of cyberspace.

 

[Pogo]

Common Grackles

Found lots of pictures of grackles in the search engine along with a plethora of sound bytes. They're squeaky, but not as loud as a Mynah Bird nor even a crow. They are about, well, a little less than Blue Jays. It's fun to watch them collect around cars at the local Walmart parking lot, where all trees were removed a couple of years ago due to hundreds of them nesting there. They took out the trees, so not as many of them visit, but the ones I saw a few mornings ago were likely on their migration path to warmer climates. These birds were healthy and happy looking, and I felt so bad I didn't have so much as a piece of popcorn to share with them. Well, maybe the next time if the manager's not out and about, looking.

All those smilies, and not a single one of them is a grackle...As I recollect, during the summertimes we lived in Wyoming, these odd little black birds that were too shiny to be crows, half of which had tails longer than their big bodies, though they weren't as big as crows nor as small as red-winged (and other) blackbirds. They were grackles, and the ones with long tails are known as boat-tailed grackles. For some reason, they didn't get into each others way, coexisted, and all, but wound up at the same roadside picnic ground near that big rock a few miles west of Casper, Wyoming, where we lived for at least 35 years, all told. Oh, the name of the rock was Independence Rock. It's been almost 10 years since we left the Equality State to retire in rural Texas, where it is warm as many months of the year as it was for cold months in Wyoming.
I'm just having a little fun until I have passed the 2-day bar to send links to bird pictures. I have to remember they put wild birds out in the garage here at US Message Board. Us bird lovers know our birds we see are pets, only they choose when they come and go,

Well, nite-nighty, all bird lovers, even if our dear little birdies have to be cooped up here in this ol' garage area of cyberspace.

My dear friend in New Jersey who took me out birding and set me up with a life list would point out the grackles and their distinctive habits splayed all over the lawns around Cape May when we were birding in season. Remember it well.

Becki, how glorious it is to have you and this thread back. I should go maintain my feeders. Last winter a black bear came onto my porch and got into them.

 

[Pogo]

The Audubon society has a really wonderful group of the songs of the song sparrow (and a whole lot more information than I could bring here)

Oh, I can't bring a link here. Sorry. No wonder nothing worked here before. I posted as freedombecki. As I said, I'm older than dirt with a memory to match. lolol

Well, for what it's worth, Just bing or google "song sparrow" or Audubon organization, and you will find a wonderful page with several mp3 files or whatever you call them nowadays on the lower screen toward the right side on their song sparrow page. And I'm sorry I posted a "sneaky" link, which I didn't know was not appreciated. Plz forgive me, all the powers that be here.

This is a worthy page ---?

As I said, I'm older than dirt with a memory to match. lolol​

So you're saying you have a dirty mind....

 

[beautress]

The Audubon society has a really wonderful group of the songs of the song sparrow (and a whole lot more information than I could bring here)

Oh, I can't bring a link here. Sorry. No wonder nothing worked here before. I posted as freedombecki. As I said, I'm older than dirt with a memory to match. lolol

Well, for what it's worth, Just bing or google "song sparrow" or Audubon organization, and you will find a wonderful page with several mp3 files or whatever you call them nowadays on the lower screen toward the right side on their song sparrow page. And I'm sorry I posted a "sneaky" link, which I didn't know was not appreciated. Plz forgive me, all the powers that be here.

This is a worthy page ---?

As I said, I'm older than dirt with a memory to match. lolol​

So you're saying you have a dirty mind....

*blush* *giggle* *blush* *giggle* *blush*
Does that answer your question sufficiently, kind sir?

 

[beautress]

Common Grackles

Found lots of pictures of grackles in the search engine along with a plethora of sound bytes. They're squeaky, but not as loud as a Mynah Bird nor even a crow. They are about, well, a little less than Blue Jays. It's fun to watch them collect around cars at the local Walmart parking lot, where all trees were removed a couple of years ago due to hundreds of them nesting there. They took out the trees, so not as many of them visit, but the ones I saw a few mornings ago were likely on their migration path to warmer climates. These birds were healthy and happy looking, and I felt so bad I didn't have so much as a piece of popcorn to share with them. Well, maybe the next time if the manager's not out and about, looking.

All those smilies, and not a single one of them is a grackle...As I recollect, during the summertimes we lived in Wyoming, these odd little black birds that were too shiny to be crows, half of which had tails longer than their big bodies, though they weren't as big as crows nor as small as red-winged (and other) blackbirds. They were grackles, and the ones with long tails are known as boat-tailed grackles. For some reason, they didn't get into each others way, coexisted, and all, but wound up at the same roadside picnic ground near that big rock a few miles west of Casper, Wyoming, where we lived for at least 35 years, all told. Oh, the name of the rock was Independence Rock. It's been almost 10 years since we left the Equality State to retire in rural Texas, where it is warm as many months of the year as it was for cold months in Wyoming.
I'm just having a little fun until I have passed the 2-day bar to send links to bird pictures. I have to remember they put wild birds out in the garage here at US Message Board. Us bird lovers know our birds we see are pets, only they choose when they come and go. But a word of warning: I'm likely to flip out if you live in mountain bluebird territory and one visits your feeder when a camera is in your hand...

Well, nite-nighty, all bird lovers, even if our dear little birdies have to be cooped up here in this ol' garage area of cyberspace.

My dear friend in New Jersey who took me out birding and set me up with a life list would point out the grackles and their distinctive habits splayed all over the lawns around Cape May when we were birding in season. Remember it well.

Becki, how glorious it is to have you and this thread back. I should go maintain my feeders. Last winter a black bear came onto my porch and got into them.

I hope you will deliver a picture of the next time you encounter those cheerful chirpers that beg food so convincingly you know they're hungry. It's just the grackle way. Also, pictures of your bird feeder would be most welcome.

 

[beautress]

 

[beautress]

And another...