Birds nesting on my house!

Here we can see the butts of two pigeons who have decided that the eaves of my house, above the porch, are an acceptable substitute for a cliff face. It looks like some previous owner built a little box on this spot (the mirror-image side of the porch doesn't have this box) ...perhaps that person really loved the oh-so-melodious sounds of pigeons courting?

Meanwhile, on the side of the house, a robin has raided the recycling to make a cushy nest of used tissues.
There also seems to be a house finch pair trying to nest in the rafters above the porch, but it was so high up I didn't get a picture.

Looking forward to seeing some babies!

House Finch Nest

Tom found a house finch nesting in the eaves of his work building.



The babies are pretty small and gross looking now. You can see the yellow edge of their mouths in this picture--the "gape."

Many baby birds have a color changing mouth--it's thought to help the parents see where to put the food. Baby finches have particularly interesting mouth-interiors. Some of them kind of look like they licked a psychelic black-light painting of a clown. I couldn't find a picture of the house finch's version though.

Baby Towhee

A few days ago Tom and I heard some incessant tweeting coming from the parking lot across from our apartment. When we looked out the window, we saw a towhee running back and forth on the fence, flying down to the driveway and back up again. Eventually we were able to spot the cause for all the fuss:

I'd be freaked out too if my baby was in a driveway! This little guy looked a bit too young to fly, so we guessed it must have fallen out of a nest somewhere and hopped over to visit us. The internet informed us that in fact, birds will NOT reject their babies if you touch them. Various rehab sites recommended replacing the baby in the nest, or, if the nest could not be found, making a substitute nest and putting that in a tree.


We used a box that formerly contained a wedding gift to shelter the baby... and after multiple tries of getting the box to stay on a branch, we ducktaped the box to a tree. I have a newfound respect for birds' nest-making skills. The parents seemed a bit confused at first and continued to call, although it could have been because of the two cats who came over to investigate. Finally they must have found the little guy. And in the morning it was gone. Good luck baby towhee!

Pigeon babies

Most people have seen a baby bird or two. They may fledge a bit early and sloppily make their way across your yard, or better still, maybe their n00b parents build a nest in a flowerpot on your porch or something. Pigeons, on the other hand, are very good at hiding their babies. This is mainly because they like to nest in crevices, or, lacking a nice cliff, the earthquake retrofitting gaps in freeway concrete. I was lucky enough to find a pigeon nest in the eaves of the Lake Merritt nature center and I attempted to document it, with limited success.

I knew that it must be around time for the baby pigeon(s) to hatch, so every few days I would check back at the nest to see if I could see any action. Usually, though, the nest would be unoccupied. If I hung around for a bit, I would see two pigeons, also nonchalantly hanging around, whistling and looking the other way...

A recent study indicated that mockingbirds can recognize individual humans who mess with their nests. I wonder if pigeons can do the same?

Anyway, I FINALLY caught one in the act, lasciviously regurgitating crop milk right in public. Yes, that blurry yellow thing on the right is the baby.

Well, I couldn't get any good pictures of the developing baby, but luckily, Wikipedia has some. And boy are they gross. Baby pigeons are even freakier than other baby birds, due to the developing cere, or "freaky bump on top"! What is that thing for? I'll get back to you.

Later, when Pigeon Jr. was almost ready to leave the nest, I got some better shots:


Check the landing gear...
Check the tail flaps...
...warm up the wings... and...

...FLAPPITY!
Uhm, yeah. False alarm. I'm not flying anywhere just yet.

Growing Pains: The luckiest dreamers who never quit dreaming, and also weren't eaten by seagulls.

The goose babies are growing older! They've entered their awkward teenager phase, and they look just as gangly and rumpled as any other adolescent...

At this phase, just like human teenagers, some embarrasing anatomical secrets are showing--in the picture below you can see the ear opening (which is usually covered over by feathers).

I wouldn't be surprised if their voices cracked too...

This baby is showing off a very sassy wing position. Barbeque sauce sold separately.

Also like human teens, the babies are developing at different rates. This one has a fully grown in tail, but the wing feathers of a child:

...while this baby's tail is still growing in, but the primaries (those not-very-visible white lines on its side) seem to be going strong, and on its face you can see the goose equivalent of peach fuzz--the developing white chinstrap. AWKWARD!

Also like middle schoolers, they hang out in giant cliques.



And to finish off the baby update, here's a cast member of Ducks: the next generation

Ultimate Fluff Parade

I thought there were a lot of geese around before, but MAN! Tom and I stumbled upon the opposite of an elephant graveyard: a gosling nursery! We counted 33 goslings total! So many we couldn't even get them all in the frame. How many can you find in this picture?

Here they are grazing happily:

But when they notice people getting too close, they run to mom for safety. "Mom! Hide us under your wing! We want to cuddle!"

"And also we'd like to use your back as a slide!"

Fluff Parade

A fourth goose family with five little goslings was on a walk today:




Mini-honk!



Haha, look at this little one, stopped in its tracks. "Dad, did you just... cut one?"

"Ugh, seriously. Grass gives us SUCH indigestion. I'm just gonna go smell this flower now. Blech."

Aaaaand Lake Merritt is proud to announce a second family of six tiny ducklings! Each little tail is fluffier than the last!


Can you believe these babies are no bigger than a feather!??!



And the winner of this year's Darwin Award for most successful reproduction in a single event:
Can you count how many goslings this pair has?

Ok, enough babies! I have more pictures of dead things coming up next...

More Signs of Spring, or, a hodgepogerry of photography

It's staying light in the evening now, long enough to walk around and get some good shots after dinner. Who's hanging out at the lake these days? (Besides me!?)

Forster's terns are still around and eating fish bigger than their heads! Look at the razor sharp tail on that ninja seabird.

Hummingbird that color coordinates itself with its perch:

Check out the lovely blue green face of this great egret.

And check out egret's supercool park bench hangout. I like its posture here--it had just flown up and landed.

It also comes with a very extendable head, and a bad urban attitude. It was actually taller than me when it did this:


Random turtle. They show up in the lake periodically. They may be washing downstream during the rains, or people may be releasing unwanted pets into the lake. Either way, brackish water is not good for turtles. At least this one made it to the beach:


For Heidi: here are the goslings I promised. This is the third group I've seen, and I think this pair is actually the two I made fun of earlier for defending the spot on top of the chain link maintenance cage. I don't know how you geese did it, but I think you did it. There are three babies; can you spot them all?


And buckeye is blooming now, an adaptation that lets a broad-leaved deciduous tree survive California's summer--it makes a very early effort to get pollinated before it runs out of water and sheds all its leaves around July: