Weekly What Bird

Can you guess what bird this is? it has a very long tail that makes it seem like a tropical bird and is really noisy.  

Last weeks Weekly What Bird was Eastern Pheobe, part of the flycatcher family.

Baby Swallows

The Tree Swallows nesting across the road have chicks. They are so cute. There is about six. You can kinda see the chicks in these pictures. I'll try to get some better pics.

Tree Swallow chicks

The swallow chicks

Inside the nesting box. You can see some of the feathers that the swallows
used for nesting material.

Weekly What Bird

Can you guess what bird this is?                                    

Leave a comment with your guess





You might find the answer if you look around the blog


Ask me if you want a hint

Abandoned Nest?

There is a cavity nest in a field across our road. It is a hole nest in a dying tree. The tree is small and still has some leaves, but most of the top is cut off and it is starting to rot. The entrance hole is 3 1/2 cm wide and 4 cm tall leading to a cavity more than 10 cm deep. Their is a small grass nest with four completely white eggs. Each egg is about an inch tall. I have visited the nest site several times, each time seeing no birds in the nest. I see Savannah Sparrows singing very near the nest, but they nest on the ground and don't have white eggs. So I assume it is abandoned, I can't touch the eggs to see if they're warm because they are too deep in the cavity. It might have been a woodpecker nest before but now it looks abandoned.  

Killdeer Family

Killdeer

Near our house there is a family of Killdeer. Killdeer are a type plover. We saw two kids but there might be more.  We got some okay pictures even though they going away from us and we could not get very close. Killdeer have two black stripes on their white chest, brown heads and over parts, large eyes and in flight sometimes look like mini seagulls. The Killdeer were sitting on the "nest" with the baby's. Killdeer don't really have nests, the're mostly like a spot to sit on the ground.
We also went to a nearby field to take pictures of a Red-winged Blackbird.                                                                      

Red-winged Blackbird

Killdeer

Killdeer parent with kids

Our First Mealworm Feeder

Our first mealworm feeder

We bought our first mealworm feeder today. Basically as soon as we put it up a chickadee came to check it out. Strip the Red-breasted Nuthatch has come and eaten all the mealworms in the feeder, we have had to refill it a couple times. We hope it attracts bluebirds and buntings. Live mealworms work the best, apparently dried ones don't really work.

Strip taking mealworm

Common Nighthawk

Since Common Nighthawk are a rare species in Manitoba it was really cool and exiting when we saw one about a week ago. We actually saw it three times flying over and once it landed in a nearby tree. The first time I wasn't sure what it was, though I thought it was a nighthawk or something. When I looked in the bird book I immediately knew that it was a Common Nighthawk. Common Nighthawks have two distinctive white bars under its wing and a nasal peent call.   

Big Whiteshell

We recently went on to Big Whiteshell Lake. There was a lot of fish, but also a lot of birds.
On the trip there we saw a Cooper's Hawk sitting on a telephone wire, a beaver and a Killdeer by the side of the road.  The first night at the lake was the most fascinating. First we saw a gull with a fish in it's mouth, but the fish escaped back into the water. We were fishing and a Bald Eagle came soaring over the lake. It came quite close, about 50 ft away from us. Then it went in for the catch, it swooped down and picked a fish from the water. Nearby there is a bird apartment. A tree with a Northern Flicker and a Wood Duck nesting in it.
The next days we saw a variety of birds, Chestnut-Sided Warblers, Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds, LOTS of Yellow Warblers, a Common Goldeneye, a Turkey Vulture, a Blue Jay, two Common Loons doing a display which was very cool, a Great Blue Heron, Belted Kingfisher and much more.