What do you see from your window?

[Felix]

Birds don't sweat like we do.

And I just tried to look up Indian Pigeons. I had no idea there were so many kinds of pigeon. The ones I've seen look exactly the same city to city. Lol I'm ignorant.

Here's what I found for Australia blackbirds -


And here's what we've got where I'm at now -


and try as I might I couldn't find anything that looked like what we called blackbirds when I was growing up.

[Cindy]

The first one is what I'm looking at, although that looks a bedraggled thing . They are imports from  Europe and not a native bird. Sadly most of the birds in the cities are imported pest species.

Since it is quite black with a yellow beak it is a male. The female is brown and really quite dull looking.

[V M]

We get all kinds of birds in the summer where I'm at, mostly robin red breasts and the females tend to be rather dull looking as well... Odd thing with birds

[Cindy]

Very common though in that the male bird has the plumage etc.

Makes me think. Birds are maybe the closest species to dinosaurs, so were male dinosaurs the colourful ones and the females dull and herd like? Sorts of fits as you would need large herds of females to keep the species going, given the gestation period for large dinosaurs, but few males, so they would have to evolve to attract the females.

So did the dinosaurs die out because the males turned Gay?  Sorry

Cindy

[tekla]

females tend to be rather dull looking as well... Odd thing with birds

so that they can guard the nest under some protection from natural coloration, while the male in the bright plumage distracts the attacker and tries to move them away from the nest.

[V M]

females tend to be rather dull looking as well... Odd thing with birds

so that they can guard the nest under some protection from natural coloration, while the male in the bright plumage distracts the attacker and tries to move them away from the nest.

It isn't working very well, the crows still get at most of their nests

[Felix]

It isn't working very well, the crows still get at most of their nests

I didn't know that crows and robins interacted. I've learned from my daughter though that there's a lot I don't notice in our neighborhood, wildlife-wise.

I have a fascination with crows. The other day I was walking in a residential area and there were a bunch of crows on a lawn, and I stopped to watch what they were doing. One by one they stopped what they were doing and looked at me. One by one they flew away, except one who stood there and cawed. Then he flew away. They all started raising a ruckus as they flew, and then one flew right at my head and then flew away, like blue jays do to cats. It was so weird.

[Cindy]

One of the strangest thinks I saw with  crows was in the property I had in the hills of Adelaide, we have very noisy totally argumentative rainbow parrots, small and very aggressive. I had put a bird feeder out and two RBs had targeted it. Two crows came up,a mating pair in the area and tried to get to the seed. The crows were ten times the size of the parrots. the parrots would not have a bar of this. One crow flew in grabbed a parrot and just threw it away, literally picked it up and threw it!!Totally amazing. The parrot was back in 60 seconds of course.

Cindy

[Felix]

One of the strangest thinks I saw with  crows was in the property I had in the hills of Adelaide, we have very noisy totally argumentative rainbow parrots, small and very aggressive. I had put a bird feeder out and two RBs had targeted it. Two crows came up,a mating pair in the area and tried to get to the seed. The crows were ten times the size of the parrots. the parrots would not have a bar of this. One crow flew in grabbed a parrot and just threw it away, literally picked it up and threw it!!Totally amazing. The parrot was back in 60 seconds of course.

Cindy

That is epic.

[V M]

I didn't know that crows and robins interacted.

It's not much of an interaction, the crows steal their eggs

[Felix]

It snowed off and on all day today (which was fantastic), and three seagulls showed up. I'm kinda near the river, and there are seagulls downtown, but I've never seen them in my neighborhood before today. They were huge and pretty, and they seemed to fly and land clumsily. The crows were really hyperactive and out of sorts today. I wonder how the snow looks and feels to them.

[Cindy]

It snowed off and on all day today (which was fantastic), and three seagulls showed up. I'm kinda near the river, and there are seagulls downtown, but I've never seen them in my neighborhood before today. They were huge and pretty, and they seemed to fly and land clumsily. The crows were really hyperactive and out of sorts today. I wonder how the snow looks and feels to them.

Reminds me of a cute tscene on the weekend. I was down at Glenelg which is a beach side area. A little boy about 3-4 was chasing the seagulls, until one stopped and raised its beak with the RAWW, RAWW scream, little boy turns around and is chased by the seagull. Probably make him into a serial physcopath

[tekla]

we have very noisy totally argumentative rainbow parrots

Some how, back in the 80s they think, a couple of Red-masked Parakeets, one male, one female, got out in the area around Telegraph Hill.  The birds then did what birds do, which is breed like bunnies.  So there is a huge flock of feral parrots, all believed to be descended from the two escapees.  Which means that this flock is almost surrealistically identical.  And when they flock, it's like a huge mass moving as one.  Pretty trippy.  But they are noisy, and when they sweep down on a tree stand it's stripped bare inside of 15 minutes.  And of course they are not native, and so have no natural predators in the food chain.  And of course, because it's SF and every two people have at least three opinions, there has been an extended debate as to whether the parrots are a way cool and unique deal, or whether they should all be killed before they do real environmental damage.  There is a doc film on them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Parrots_of_Telegraph_Hill

[Cindy]

We have the Sar Majors and Black cockatoos that are massive birds. They fly into and settle on a tree and the thing gets broken limbs etc. I made the mistake of planting Lillipilly bushes in my old place, they have a nice fruit you can bottle or make jam from etc. After about 100 black cockatoos came to investigate we were deafened and had no surviving bushes in minutes.

I think we do have to think about culling none native animals. In Australia we have been hit with some really stupid decisions to import animals to control pests, Cane toads are a great example, poisonous to every native animal and of no use to anyone.

We also make 'tragic' mistakes. Most people think Koalas are cuddly and gorgeous, they are until you try and cuddle them, or have a male in the mating season outside your bedroom. They make a fairly constant noise of a fire horn on crack coke. Their lady friends love it. No one else could.

'We' sent a heap of koalas to place called Kangaroo Island off South Australia, neither kangaroos or koalas are native to the island. They have run out of food. "We" cannot cull them because the tourist and overseas tourist people hear we are 'culling' koalas we are worse than whalers, and funnily it is a large Japanese contingent that is against it. So they are starving to death, tourists love it. Oh look that koala has just fallen out of a tree in front of us and it is crawling to shade;take a picture; as it crawls to die.

Love amateurs

Sorry
Bad Mood thinking about it

Cindy

[Felix]

'We' sent a heap of koalas to place called Kangaroo Island off South Australia, neither kangaroos or koalas are native to the island. They have run out of food. "We" cannot cull them because the tourist and overseas tourist people hear we are 'culling' koalas we are worse than whalers, and funnily it is a large Japanese contingent that is against it. So they are starving to death, tourists love it. Oh look that koala has just fallen out of a tree in front of us and it is crawling to shade;take a picture; as it crawls to die.

Cindy you are such a ray of sunshine. I'm gonna have the best dreams ever tonight.

[Cindy]

Sorry I didn't mean to upset.

When we left our Hills property we were both quite upset. It was a piece of heaven.

The big male who was the dominant for the area was in a big eucalyptus tree outside our bedroom he was going all night, calling and calling. In the morning I got my wife ready and we were both incredibly sad to leave this place. The big guy looked at us, he could not see us, as they are vision is poor but he raised his head to the sky, and bugled for several minutes. We felt very special. I'll try and post the pics, not good at that BTW.

But we did keep and try and make an environment for the native animals. We did kill feral cats and foxes. local cats were put in a box, returned to their owner if I knew them, with a little message  saying that this was the 9th.

Getting misty; we had echindas, a couple of wallabies, a few generations of Kookaburras, they also tolerated us. We were definitely not the owners. They were. But they would accept a sausage. Watching a Kookaburra beating a sausage to death is quite a thing, they eat lizards and snakes so they kill their prey.

And the lizards and snakes and spiders. It was living in life. I feel so fortunate to be able to have done that.

Sorry for going on. It hit some memories and thank you for that.

Cindy

[V M]

Are they not able to set up a food supply for the animals on the island? 

[kelly_aus]

'We' sent a heap of koalas to place called Kangaroo Island off South Australia, neither kangaroos or koalas are native to the island. They have run out of food. "We" cannot cull them because the tourist and overseas tourist people hear we are 'culling' koalas we are worse than whalers, and funnily it is a large Japanese contingent that is against it. So they are starving to death, tourists love it. Oh look that koala has just fallen out of a tree in front of us and it is crawling to shade;take a picture; as it crawls to die.

Love amateurs

Sorry
Bad Mood thinking about it

Cindy

Yeah, instead of simply culling them or transporting them off the island, they decided that catching them, sterilising them and releasing them again was the best idea.. Way to spend our tax dollars..

[Felix]

Yeah, instead of simply culling them or transporting them off the island, they decided that catching them, sterilising them and releasing them again was the best idea.. Way to spend our tax dollars..

This is what we do with stray cats in a lot of places in the U.S.

[Jennifer]

It's snowing again!

Jenny