A Few of the Birds I Love
23 comments
·February 28, 20250x0203
I've got a mockingbird that comes and asks for food every morning. The cardinals and titmice will fly up to the tree outside the window and wait as soon as I open the window, but the mockingbird will sit on the tray on the window and stare at me until I open it. When I do, he'll wait in the tree, but as soon as I put the meal worms down, he'll come back and start chowing down. Doesn't seem to mind being within an arms reach of me at the open window. Never makes a sound though. Not while I can see him around the feeder at least.
Working from home with the window/feeder right next to my desk is pretty nice. You get to see the different temperaments and "personalities" of the various birds pretty quick. Sometimes even within the same species; e.g., most of the male cardinals are a bit aggressive, and chase other smaller birds away if they get too close, but a new young male that started coming recently is considerably more timid, and gets pushed around by most of the other sparrows and wrens.
The red-bellied woodpecker that likes to make machine-gun noises on my gutters every day, however, does get a little tiresome.
rdtsc
> If their [swallows'] designer had any regard for the effect their flight would have on human beings, then they exist to bring out the bit of that child that is still left in us.
Besides the flight, I like how they are monogamous, some build mud nests, and if they migrate they'd often come back to the same nest. One family of swallows have built their nest by my aging parent's balcony, and have been visiting them for a few years every summer. It brings them tremendous joy watching them and seeing them care for the chicks.
Apropos of colorful descriptions of birds, it's hard not to mention The Peregrine by J. A. Baker. Someone recommended the book to me and I really enjoyed it.
internet_points
> We are the killers. We stink of death. We carry it with us. It sticks to us like frost. We cannot tear it away.
[...]
> A swallow flits past, purple against the roaring whiteness of the weir, blue over the green smoothness of the river. As so often on spring evenings, no birds sing near me, while all the distant trees and bushes ring with song. Like all human beings, I seem to walk within a hoop of red-hot iron, a hundred yards across, that sears away all life. When I stand still, it cools, and slowly disappears.
gadders
In the UK, the one bird I love overall for its song is the blackbird. Best bit of the dawn chorus and the first one of the year lets me know Spring/Summer is on the way.
I think everyone in the UK thinks fondly of robins, and has negative opinions of pigeons. I did too, until I found out that they are Rock Doves that swapped nesting in cliffs by the sea for tall buildings in towns. It's not their fault they're successful at it.
Male pheasants are handsome creatures too, but the most stupidly suicidal birds I have ever seen near to roads.
A murmuation of starlings is hard to beat as well.
lxgr
Not just that: “City pigeons” are feral descendants of formerly domesticated rock doves. That’s why they are so comfortable around humans, in the way that usually only livestock or pet animals are, and actively seek us and our settlements out.
We just got tired of them, and then largely forgot about all of that.
neverartful
Nice list. I also delight in having purple martins nearby. They're such a joy to watch.
kaiwen1
Upvote for the mockingbird. One fellow has for years perched himself in tree near the sidewalk tables at my favorite restaurant. His songs are as good as the food.
> only three species of birds survived the Chicxulub asteroid impact
I think it was three clades that survived, not individual species.
moultano
Yes, it's possible that some of the diversification within those clades happened before the impact, but the start of the radiation is so close to the impact that I think it's unlikely that it happened earlier. It would be too much of a coincidence, and the error bars for the molecular clocks almost always include the impact.
hoseja
Hummingbirds just fill me with anxiety. Miserable fate to devolve into an insect.
brador
Magpie, just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s boring. Just watching a common magie come in to land is awesome inspiring.
voidUpdate
I'm really basic, I just like seeing the magpies, pied wagtails and little finches on my commute. They make me happy =)
jessekv
Cedar waxwings are pretty sharp looking too.
kaonwarb
Gorgeously evocative writing. Thank you for sharing. I'm going to look at birds tomorrow.
zenethian
It really makes me wonder why humans never developed the ability to see UV light when so many other creatures in nature can.
moultano
It's leftover from when all mammals were nocturnal. Color vision is useless at night, there aren't enough photons to care about their frequency, so mammals lost it almost entirely and only primates have re-evolved the red-green distinction. Birds were big stomping dinosaurs, and out during the day, so their color vision is great.
Some mammals can see UV even though they can't differentiate it from other blues. One theory I recall reading is that detecting UV would interfere with our unusually high visual acuity, but I forget the argument why.
tejtm
Yep we would have had it. Then traded the fourth type of cone for more rods because we were hiding underground and only coming out at night ... to be fair those dinos were big.
internet_points
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/reindeer-may-not-be-ab... (I don't know if that means reindeer are able to distinguish it from other colors or if they're sensitive to it but ultraviolet-something-colorblind)
We recently got a bird feeder with an attached camera (wifi-connected). I had always dabbled in bird watching, but this surprisingly took me to another level. I now feel protective of my local birds as if they were a pet like a dog. And I recognize them day after day.
My favorite bird before was the cardinal because of its amazing color and song.
Now, with the camera, I have realized the incredible intelligence and personality of woodpeckers. They are my new favorite.
The Cornell BirdLab app is another essential tool for appreciating how much life is around (at least in my region). It feels like a cheat code and has also helped me fall in love with a visually mild bird, the Brown Cowbird.