Introducing Today’s Bird

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while. I’d like to share the most interesting bird I come across every day, or most days. Since I’m learning so much about birds lately, why not share? Usually I’ll just stick a bird paragraph and photo at the end of a normal blog about horses, dogs, plants, or whatever. Today I want to share two, though, so that will be all the blog (oh darn, you’re saying, what about today’s bur adventure in which Suna got completely covered in them?). No one cares about that.

Yesterday’s bird of the day made me very happy. I heard and saw my first Harris’s sparrow of the year. In my opinion, they are the most dapper of sparrows, with all the black on their heads and pretty white edges to their wing feathers.

Their song is quite distinctive and loud, so once you know what a Harris’s sparrow sounds like, you can find them. The first time I spotted one was when I was wandering around in Sara’s pasture looking for sparrows a couple of years ago. I managed to get a blurry photo to ID it with, and afterward I was on the lookout! They are so pretty!

I think I’ve mentioned before that they’re one of the last winter sparrows to arrive. It’s no wonder! They come from practically the North Pole! It’s cool that they only live in the center of the US. There are very few advantages to being here, bird-wise, so that’s cool.

Things I’ve learned about them:

• They are the only bird that exclusively breeds in Canada.
• They like fields near water. This explains why we see them, since we’re so near the creek.
• They hang out on the ground out in the open more than a lot of sparrows (well, not more than Savannah sparrows).

The Daily Bird for today is the Barred Owl. Today I finally got one recorded on Merlin, so it’s on my “life list” there (though I’ve been familiar with them since I moved here). They are gorgeous birds and I love listening to them go “who cooks for you?” Over and over.

These birds have some interesting habits. They love to nest and hang out in abandoned buildings. How did I learn this? Well, after we bought the Rattlesnake house down the road, we didn’t mess with it for a while. Finally, we brought our contractor at the time over to look at it. All was well until we went upstairs. When we entered the main bedroom there was a big noise, lots of feathers rustling, and there was a barred owl, not happy to see us. It expressed its opinion by letting loose a very large stream of owl poop as it flew off. Yes, we scared the poop out of it. Fun times.

I’m not always so fond of them, since they ate all my chickens when I was caring for the ones over by the cabin where my son lives now. Not fun times.

Things I’ve learned about them:

• They are also called hoot owls. I always wondered what a hoot owl actually was.
• They don’t migrate. We’re on the western edge of their range, though they have spread further in the northern US.
• Their biggest predator is the great horned owl. Grr. Leave my owls alone.

More non-bird content tomorrow.