That’s right, you read correctly. All the pictures in this installment were taken right from my office window. I look up a hill and there is a dead tree, which birds love to perch on. As you can see, I paid attention.
Also, I will not write all the captions at the moment because it is already so late. I only wrote caption for the last picture because, when I opened it in my photo editor, I was surprised by what I saw.
However I will come back tomorrow and add comments for the others. If you are so inclined feel free to add your guess of the name of each bird.
Right, as Tim said, this is a Red-Shouldered Hawk. They are pretty common in my neighborhood.
The mockingbird at bottom is trying to make the hawk leave, presumably because it has a nest nearby.
The mockingbird is getting closer, but he's being royally ignored, not too surprising considering the difference in size.
Now the mockingbird is trying a more active approach, and doing some acrobatics to try to make the hawk leave
And again it fails miserably to get the Hawk's attention.
Even worse, now another hawk comes to perch on the dead tree. So, he said "OK I give up!!" and flew away.
This is a California Scrub-Jay. For the longest time I thought it was the arid areas version of the Blue Jay commonly found in the east of the country. But I found nothing to confirm this. This Scrub-Jay seemed very happy with the acorn he found and was trying to hide it.
Now he hid the acorn under that dead branch.
But then he thought better of it, picked it back up and moved it under this bigger piece of dead wood
This is another Red Shouldered Hawk. But I thought it was particularly interesting to view its beautiful back feathers.
This Red-Shouldered Hawk decided it was time for a good preening session.
Red Shouldered Hawk preening
Full house! The crows are pretty active in my neighborhood. Sometimes even annoyingly so. I let you imagine all these guys chatting loudly early in the morning.
At another time and another day, these 3 guys were in the middle of particularly heated arguments, while the forth one was staring pensively at the north
The heated argument got worse. Looks like the 2 in the middle ganged up against the one on the left. Meanwhile the one on the right remains impassive.
OK you guys have said enough! Leave me alone!. Meanwhile the one on the left lower his head in disbelief at his friends lousy social behavior.
This a male House Finch with 2 females. Not sure what the mating ritual involves. Are the females competing for his attention?
It took me a long time to find what bird this is. I thought for a while it was a Gold Finch, but the beak is wrong. I think that this is a young female Hooded Oriole.
This is a Cooper awk
I have been wondering why he was leaning on the left.
Cooper hawk
This bird looks very much like a female Red-Naped Sapsucker.
I have been wondering why is it called Sapsucker, because this one was picking at the trunk of a dead tree for quite a while. I doubt there there is any sap left. So I think it was after some bugs, termites perhaps?
Examine this last picture carefully. It contains 3 different kind of birds: hummingbird at left, sap sucker in the middle and a common rosefinch at right. This was probably a lucky strike. I don't recall if I was trying to get these 3 birds on the same pic.
