The grackles are courting

 

©voyager, all rights reserved

She lands first. Then he, about a foot away.

He looks at her sideways and puffs himself up. She looks at him sideways and hops away.

He hops to her again and raises his beak to the sky while glancing at her sideways. She raises her beak too and also glances at him sideways.

They repeat the throat display with lots of sideways glances. Once. Twice. Then she hops away again.

He hop follows her and puffs himself up again. One more throat display and then suddenly they fly away, she first and he hot on her tail.

Enter the next pair (or the same pair…it’s hard to tell) and repeat.

This has been going on all day and I can hardly tear myself away from the window. My back fence is definitely a hot pick-up place for grackles this year. I can hardly wait to see all the babies. (photos taken by spy cam through the bedroom window)

The Daily Bird #694.

This year I finally managed to make a picture of a singing male black redstart. They are always nesting somewhere close, but I never found out where exactly. Possibly in my neighbour’s garden.

They are cheeky and swift builders – one day I forgot to close the barn door for the afternoon and they have built a nest in there, that I found out a few days later (abandoned, of course, since the barn was closed in the meantime). I am trying to provide them with suitable nesting places but they insist on building nests in the most insane places possible, where I only find them when I destroy them by accident at the same time – like in the concrete mixer, or under the cover on the wood chopping block. I have to be careful to close doors and windows in the spring, and to cover any holes where I do not wish to be surprised by a bird’s nest.

I do not mind them nesting here, what I do mind is me accidentaly destroing said nests.

Male Black Redstart

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

F Is For Fantail Warbler and Fuinha-dos-Juncos.

Fantail Warbler. Fuinha-dos-Juncos.

Common English and Portuguese names for the bird Cisticola juncidis, here perched on a maize tassel. It’s a small insectivorous bird with a characteristic “zit…zit…zit…zit” call and a zigzagging flight, easy to spot in flight but not always easy to figure out where it landed, as it rarely chooses such a conspicuous perch as in this photo. A funny thing is the Portuguese common name, which means marten-of-the-reeds. Yes, marten as in the mustelid. I don’t know why.

Click for full size!

© Nightjar, all rights reserved.