Friday, June 18, 2010

Rose and the Fordham Fledges and a Bird Miscellany


Photo by Richard Fleisher
From one of the chief watchers of the Fordham nest of Rose and Vince, Rich Fleisher--
First time on campus in about a week. I spent several hours watching the nest. All three of the young stayed close to the nest doing a great deal of whining.

Photo of Rose by Richard Fleisher

Photo by Richard Fleisher

At about 5 pm two of them took off. One went right to the administration building where it stayed for about an hour before returning to the nest site. The other was much more adventurous as it proceeded to put on quite a show flying around to several of the trees, landing on the ground, trying to attack an adult squirrel, finding a dead pigeon lying in the middle of the road which it picked up and carried to a distant tree where it proceeded to devour its first meal not provided by either Rose or Vince.

Photo by Richard Fleisher
Rose meanwhile put on a belated appearance and proceeded to land on one of the ledges below the Red Tail nest site (where several smaller birds presumably have a nest), stuck her beak into the corner before flying off.

Photo by Richard Fleisher

All in all a great day for photography!! I have attached several photos - more on the Flickr site.

Rich
http://www.flickr.com/photos/profman_wildlife_photos/

It sounds like Vince and Rose have begun the weaning process with more time between feedings so the youngsters will begin going out and making more attempts at hunting, or in the case of the pigeon-- foraging.



I looked up and there was a Great Blue Heron flapping by.

I always smile at their legs and feet just trailing along behind them. But considering the length of the appendage and the fact that they've already got their neck doubled in already trailing seems for the best.

This Robin has just won a "Battle of the Bath" with a Starling which is unusual and he's enjoying every moment.

Well except for the fact that I'm rudely watching.

Silver says, "Bye, see you later".

(Still loads to come from our contributors. Plus when I took a wrong turn and while turning around, looked over at a cow on the other side of the road in a bit of pasture and a calf fell right out of her!)

Donegal Browne

2 comments:

Karen Anne said...

For some reason, I am seeing hardly any birds use my deck birdbath for bathing this year, in contrast to previous years. For drinking, yes, and lots of birds around, just not taking baths. Sigh, one of my favorite things to watch,they seem to enjoy themselves so much.

Donegal Browne said...

Now isn't that fascinating. I'm assuming that the weather is approximately the same as last year and that isn't playing into the bath lack and that you're using the same bath, in the same position, with the same water source. Is it possible that there is a predator around that is keeping everyone a little too much on their toes to give other to the lack of focus that occurs during a bath? Or, this could result in bath envy, akin to twig envy, someone else in the neighborhood has put out a bath and the birds like the other one better?