A Miscellany On the Home Front- Hummingbirds in hyperhphagia, Hormonal Quicksilver Part 2, the Curious Red-tail, Plus African Greys, Sam, and The Pepperberg Parrot Lab

It has been a bumper year for hornets so humans have had to be wary and as it turns out so too do the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

This immature watched which orifice the hornet was making for and then intelligently chose another.

 I'd seen photographs of hummingbirds during pre-migration hyperphagia landing on human hands as a perch if near a feeder. But I'd never seen it live until I heard that one of the neighbors was participating in episodes of the behavior.

Silver and The Chest of Drawers Part 2

Last we saw Quicksilver he was heading back under the chest of drawers..

First I heard gnawing sounds and then wood splinters being pulled off.

"Silver!  Knock it off!"

Ah oh!  I looked down to make sure I had shoes on.  He no longer looked like a rational parrot and I was in the cross hairs.

And he was coming toward me with focus and I surmised, negative purpose.

Then suddenly he stopped, for no reason I could come up with and appeared to think for a moment...

Then elongated his neck and bobbed his head from the base of his neck, up, down, up, down, up, down, which looks very silly and always gets a laugh.  I laughed  in spite of myself.  He laughed.

Then he tootled off at speed in the opposite direction, went under the chest, out the other side, hopped up on the side of the cat bowl and had a long drink of water.   ???

Why was the Gunfight at the OK Corral avoided?  I have no idea.

 Athena, the newest resident of Dr. Irene Pepperberg's Parrot Lab, newly relocated to Harvard.

 Photo courtesy of Aaron Snyder and The Alex Foundation
http://alexfoundation.org/?page_id=6308

 What does this have to do with the home front?  Well give me a minute.

Long time readers of the blog will remember the sporadic appearances in the aforementioned, of my daughter Samantha who has been watching the Red-tailed Hawks in New York City with and without me intermittently since she was 10.  Also she is often mentioned in various adventures with Quicksilver the African Grey Parrot.

Well Samantha, went off to college and she now has her dream work study job.  

No, her job isn't in the library,  or giving tours of the Campus, or cutting up salad in the cafeteria,  Sam interviewed and nabbed a spot at Pepperberg's Parrot Lab.  

A tidbit-
At the end of the interview when Sam was asked if the offered pay was adequate she said, "Are you KIDDING! I'd do this for FREE!"  

It was then explained to her that they tried very hard not to use slave labor at the lab.

And last but not least, the rural Red-tail who keeps flying by and taking a look.  This is weird.  Rural Red-tails 99.9 percent of the time stay as far from humans  than they possibly can.  They are not in the least interested in our human endeavors  in the way that some urban Red-tails are.  Pale Male is interested.  Tristan was interested, the list goes on but not these guys...or so I thought.

One of the freelance things I do is to photograph the yearly Steam School at Thresherman's Park.  People come from all over the country to learn about steam power, try their hand at operating a steam traction engine and in some cases, they gird their loins to take the state test to be licensed as a steam operator.

So I'm photographing this sort of thing... and suddenly a Red-tailed Hawk flies by in the typical curious urban hawk position.  It's a glide with her head turning as she goes to look at the humans and whatever it is they are doing.

This doesn't happen in the country or it hadn't happened to me until this event.  The hawk did it several times, and because it was so out of context in a rural setting I was always staring and forgetting to get the camera up in time.  I felt like some cluck who'd never photographed a hawk on the fly before.

This is the best I got.

But then I realized that in an urban setting one usually has a bit more time before the hawk flies into the tree line and disappears...more buildings, fewer trees.   

Happy Hawking!

Donegal Browne

Pale Male Hangs Out, and Quicksilver the African Grey Parrot Guards the Chest of Drawers

     photo courtesy of palemale.com/

  Pale Male and a helicopter.  Note  the Monarch of Central Park isn't phased in the least.

(Blogger is once again malfunctioning.  Sorry for any inconvenience. ) 

Longtime NYC hawkwatcher and astronomy buff Mitch Nussbaum  nabs a shot of Pale Male.

  I was back in NY last weekend for a family re-union. I found him atop the Carlyle at 5 past 3. I feel lucky to see him, for the park was packed at that time, and the other birds were being skittish. I always wanted to image PM with this camera. Truly-Mitch
 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51058083@N03/9544374648/ (Preview)

Now the strange occurrence of the splinters on the laundry room floor and Silver, the African Grey Parrot, clicks, menaces, and charms. 

 It all began, well it didn't really all begin here, but it was the first rather mysterious occurrence.  Suddenly splinters began to appear on the floor of the laundry room.

How odd.

Well okay, perhaps not as I live with a parrot and Silver had decided that the laundry room was a great place to hang out.  Hence the towels covering the furniture.

Plus during the day, the curtains are open and there is a sunflower jungle just outside the window.  Therefore there are many bird visitors to watch.  Plus chipmunk skirmishes, squirrel sex, and the occasional crow looking in a Silver.  Kind of a in the moment nature cam for parrots.  I thought that this was the attraction.  Silly me.

The splinters kept appearing though I lifted the towels looking for secret gnawing...nothing.

Wait, lets backtrack a couple of weeks...just past Silver's chest of drawers perch and to the left, is the small downstairs bathroom.  Whenever I went into it, Silver would fly off the chest, walk in the door, say very sweetly, "Hi hon."  and pinch my big toe with his beak.  

Very amusing.  At least he thought so as he'd then laugh.

Well the other day when I came out of the bathroom and past the chest the other direction he followed me on foot.  Hmmm.

And he'd keep coming...

And he kept coming.  The toe pinching thing was getting a little  aggressive no matter how sweetly he said, "Hi hon."  I told him to knock it off.  (The debris on the floor behind him contained some splinters but it was also the result of a sunflower knosh.)

The next time I passed through the laundry room I heard this weird clicking sound coming from under the chest of drawers.

Guess who?

Silver appeared from under the wreck of chest of drawers.  Note the different posture from the previous advance.  This posture is aggressive.  Do Greys actually have an innate warning noise that is a click?  He'd never done it before.  

Note all the splinters.  Silver appears to be excavating a nesting cavity under the chest  though I'd never caught him under it before.  The little sneak.

I'd kept walking and evidentally passed some invisible line as he then, neck feathers still standing turned back to his "nesting cavity".

 

And back under he went.

Gnawing sounds wafted from under the chest.  I said "Silver! What are you doing?" in one of my best I'm-the-boss-voices.
We'd already had this argument about him opening the kitchen cabinets and removing things, which he'd lost.  (I put up a magnetic screen door so he couldn't fly into the kitchen anymore.)

Blogger has frozen when it comes to photos...

 MORE TO COME...

DB

The Fordham Red-tails- An Update from Longtime Watcher Chris Lyons

From Chris Lyons, 

Looks like the whole family is over at The Botanical Gardens. Haven't been seeing them of late, and obviously this is why.

I asked Debbie Becker to keep me posted about sightings over in the Gardens, and she just emailed me this morning.  

I figured they'd end up over there--it's a richer hunting ground than the campus, though the youngsters do have to watch out for the Great Horned Owls there.  


Here's a lovely video of one of the fledglings having the NYC experience of being mobbed by Blue Jays plus other young Red-tail activities-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVYgTGILZlk&feature=youtu.be

And two photos by Botanical Gardens Browser Pat Gonzalez
http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/naturecamhd/9498704008/

http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/naturecamhd/9498754380/

My sighting of the day was a Red-headed Woodpecker, a species I've not seen in years.  Unfortunately we surprised each other.  He went around the back of a tree and when I looked he took off for the opposite treeline.  He's over there somewhere but I've not been able to find him.

Happy Hawking
Donegal Browne