Way cool, Dan! As far as I'm concerned birds are definitely more than distantly related to the garden! Gardening is MUCH more fun when there are Fine Feathered Friends around to watch and listen too when I'm sitting out there working (quietly) on one of my projects! I'd still enjoy gardening if they weren't around, but there would definitely be something lost!

Now, the blackbirds I can easily do without! And I don't have to worry about the house sparrows since I don't feed anything they like anymore, but for all the others, the more the merrier! Even when I'm out there leveling out the mulch again where the robins have been digging for worms! Bring 'em on!

Oh how I wish there were still lots of big old cottonwoods and acres of prairie dogs along 120th so we'd still have bald eagles around here!

Gardens without birds would be sad,
Skybird

P.S. Have you ever been out to the "new" Rocky Mountain Arsenal Refuge? Is it good???

P.P.S. When I first saw your post I mixed up "naturalist" with "naturist" and had visions of you out at Barr Lake training nudists how to walk! ;-D

Ha! 2 posts, 2 laffs! Ha!

Okay. As behooves the subject, Let's Get Serious . . . .

Dan, this is from early June in my garden, a few years ago:

Here is a link that might be useful: the ultimate in rodent control

I saw a bald eage today too, just driving home from Rifle on Hwy 6. It was sitting in a tree along the side of the river. Wouldn't even have noticed it, if it wasn't for that white head. Of course, when I went bird watching last month, couldn't find a single one, LOL!

They do love the water. I have only seen them up by Wisconsin lakes, I see more Goldens around here. Huge ancient nest larger than a VW bug. You may not have seen this but this spring/summer check out http://birdcam.xcelenergy.com/eagle.html
The location is over on the Platte river to the east of Denver. I make a point of checking it out during my lunch hour.

Ooh I love seeing the bald eagles! There is one we see almost every day driving the 8 year to school. I can also sit at my kitchen table in the morning sipping a cup of joe and see them fly by. We also see a lot of hawks and other eagles. We had a big hawk sitting on our fence the other day and I couldn't get my camera to focus on it. I have noticed a lot more eagles this year compared to the last 2 we lived here. We have good proximity between the arsenal and Barr Lake so we are pretty lucky.

Dan-I have never seen them "fish". I bet that was a treat to see.

Last summer we had a bird build a nest in our neighbor�s tree. It sounded like a squeaky swing and it "squeaked" ALL day long. I sure was glad to see it go.

On another note...We will be hanging our bat box this weekend! I hope they take care of the mosquito's since I have already been killing them this year.

I mentioned I have only seen them at a Wisconsin Lake . We were canoeing across a lake and watched one grab a large Pike. Looked just like the old ad that was on TV (I think it was Whirlpool) Amazing.

Live Streaming Eagle Nest

We were watching that yesterday before our raptor class. Kinda cool. Ours at Barr Lake should be out any day!

Dan

Digit, I'm loving the live streaming eagle nest site. Thanks for posting that.

Connie

Was just watching the Lucy the Owl cam (side by side with the eagles), and one of the babies backed right up to the camera and pooped into it (toward it)! Funny because it was so unexpected! The owl babies don't do much! Only 20-some viewers!

The eagles have been great! Very active much of the time! When I tuned in, one of the babies was "out" and there were almost 150,000 viewers. The wind picked up and the baby crawled "inside," and a couple thousand viewers dropped off very quickly. Just a couple minutes ago ago the mother was up and doing stuff (butt to camera, couldn't see the babies), and then the father arrived with dinner. Couldn't see the feeding--butt to camera again! The mother left right after the father got there---he looked, as if to say, where are YOU going! Now Daddy Dearest is sitting on the Peeps, and the bloody dinner leftovers are laying in front of him! Chicks are taking a warm nap! Viewers going down again! Papa's pulling feathers from around him in against his body to insulate them more!

I love it when the adult birds are sitting on the chicks and they suddenly look down as if to say: What the H___ are you doing down there???

Have stuff to do outside! Time to x out for a while!

If anybody hasn't found it yet, watch the video of what the area around the nest looks like! I had visions of them being out in The Wild somewhere, but there are actually houses right under them!

Skybird

I started keeping chickens many years ago and as some of you may know, sparrows just love chicken food. After awhile the sparrow herd swelled way out of proportion and they would wait for me to come feed them every morning, sometimes letting the chickens have the leftovers.
Well, this winter I noticed that something was getting to them. I would see small little circles of sparrow feathers in the snow but no kitty tracks or other signs of animals.
The mystery was solved when one morning I rounded the corner of the coop and came face to face with a male sparrow hawk not three feet away! He was waiting for me to feed the chickens so that he could eat a sparrow. Love it.

Just as long as he wasn't eating your chicken, Nativewines. Of course, a sparrow hawk and a 7 pound laying hen isn't quite as good a match as a sparrow hawk and a sparrow.

They gotta live . . . and, it is fortunate for us if they have a good chance at it.

The neighbor across the road has a Rottweiler and 2 big walnut trees. The starlings like to hang out in the trees and wait for the left-over dog food.

A sharp-shined hawk would show up in one of those trees often during the first months after the leaves dropped. He finally got his trajectory worked out so that he would come up over the high fence of the elementary school behind the house, cruise down a row of tall arborvitae, and show up in that tree behind those waiting starlings. The Rottweiler would have 1 or another starling no longer waiting for his food each day. There is a far smaller flock lately.

The school grounds keepers have been out in the playing field thru much of last week. That row of arborvitae are now gone! The scales have tipped back towards the starlings.

Steve

It was interesting the other day during our raptor class, the lady teaching the class is fantastic, but she hadn't seen a kestrel take any birds. I've seen it probably a half-dozen times and its cooler every time. When I lived in Western WA I used to enjoy the Northern harriers split the starling flocks as they stooped and took birds as well.

I have little respect for typical school groundskeepers anyway, and I'm not sure that anecdote about removing plants changes anything, but too bad you can't see the sharp-shinned work so effectively. The accipters should be coming up soon to work on your starling population.

Dan

Amazing!!! My guy videoed a meadowlark a few weeks ago. the little guy was sitting atop a post (no surprise there) with a sign just below reading "...is a wildlife preserve..." No, really?

I saw that eagle in the photo and had no idea it was a bald eagle.

Oh, and I've viewed the eagle nest video--love it!!!

J

birds+gardening.... just keep the purple martins away from my house, please! I have one that seriously dive-bombs me when I'm trying to plant out! I have to really watch when kitty is out in the yard with me--I'm afraid she wouldn't see him coming and get beat up LOL. She's a hand-raised baby and has no real clue how to be a real cat.
However, I wouldn't even keep sunflowers if it weren't for the lovely sparrows and finches that come and feast on them in the fall!
VERY cool that you got to see the eagles, everyone! Hubby and I were driving around in the south of Longmont area the other day and saw no less than three red-tailed hawks. One was giving us the evil eye and kept flying in our direction... Getting a bit territorial, that one was!