Hummingbird Cottage News

[osprey_archer]

Exciting news from the Hummingbird Cottage: a Canada goose is nesting by the lake, right across from my patio! There are two geese, actually, and sometimes one is on the nest and the other patrolling, but sometimes both on the lake, dipping their heads underwater so their white back ends stick up in the air.

So far no sign of goslings, but I’m keeping an eye out. The pond might be christened Gosling Pond.

However, I also believe that there’s a kingfisher (!!) in the area, and if I can get a positive ID on the bird, the pond will likely be Kingfisher Pond instead. I am not very confident in my bird identification skills and even less so than usual in this case because I would LOVE to have a kingfisher, and therefore fear deluding myself. But I’ve seen it more than once and feel cautiously hopeful that I have not after all led myself astray.

Other birds in the area: lots of robins. Cardinals. Blue jays. A lot of little brown birds that I vaguely classify as “sparrows,” although I’m sure some of them are chickadees. A lovely little red bird, smaller than a cardinal and without the distinctive crest, very red at the front and fading to brown at the back. I saw that one in the tree outside my office window, which is on the second story so I am of a height with the birds in the trees.

The office is a fancy name for a table pushed up under the window, where I do my Sunday Writing Mornings. Mostly I’m working on short stories, and I’m building up a little stash: seven so far! This is also the room where I practice my dulcimer (most recently working on “Scotland the Brave”), and think about practicing my tin whistle, but I haven’t managed to take the plunge on that one yet.

It’s getting warm enough to plant, so I need to get started in the garden. There’s a rosemary plant that appears to have overwintered, as there’s green coming into the tips of its gray leaves, and some very happy mint on the shady side of the house. Not sure what kind. I brought a little inside and Bramble was very interested, starting whizzing around the house, and then either jumped or fell off the upstairs balcony into the living room. (He was fine. He has been courting this experience for weeks, as he considers the balcony rail a fun enrichment opportunity for cats.)

My composting efforts were met with great enthusiasm by the wildlife community, by which I mean that something dug them up repeatedly until it ate every last bit that it found appetizing. Strongly suspect the agency of a possum that I saw waddling across the patio one morning. This is probably a heartening sign of biodiversity, but as I don’t wish to open a buffet for possums, the composting is on hold as I consider next steps.

Comments

[pauraque]

Kingfisher ID tip: Familiarize yourself with their calls! I often hear them before I see them.

A lovely little red bird, smaller than a cardinal and without the distinctive crest, very red at the front and fading to brown at the back.

Sounds like a male House Finch!

[asakiyume]

I was going to say the same about the house finch!

[osprey_archer]

The House Finch does look promising! Hopefully I'll see the little guy again so I can check the ID.

[osprey_archer]

Happy to report the House Finch showed up again, with a lady House Finch friend, no less!

[pauraque]

Fabulous! Maybe you'll have fledgling finches to go with your potential goslings. :)

[osprey_archer]

Oh I hope so! I would love to have some baby birds out my window.

[regshoe]

Kingfishers are difficult to get wrong if you get a good view of them, but the problem is that you often don't :D Good luck spotting it again (and fingers crossed for goslings also)!

A lovely little red bird, smaller than a cardinal and without the distinctive crest, very red at the front and fading to brown at the back.

I was going to suggest redpoll, but it looks like you're probably not far enough north. (And looking it up to check that is how I learnt that the redpoll has recently been lumped into a single species. Horror! What about all the effort I put into learning to tell the former three species apart???)

[sholio]

I don't think I'd say redpoll, because we have a lot of them here - they're year-round residents in Alaska and regular visitors to my feeder - and the red is much more subtle on most of the ones I've seen than it looks in pictures, almost invisible some of the time and frequently almost pinkish looking. They also tend to occur in large flocks, or flocking with other birds, and I don't really ever see them alone - although that might be mostly winter behavior.

[regshoe]

That's true! The red colour does vary a lot—hmm, my bird book says males are redder than females and the red is stronger during the breeding season than in winter but there's also a lot of random variation between individuals, which would have been about what I'd have said.

pauraque's suggestion of house finch sounds good (I'm not familiar with them IRL—those pictures look rather like the colouring of a redpoll combined with the build of a greenfinch, which is pleasing). Or a rosefinch of some kind? I've never seen those either.

[osprey_archer]

Birds have this unhelpful habit of perching in trees where they are half-hidden by branches, then flying away when I'm trying to get a good look at them?! It's like they have things to do aside from being IDed.

[wychwood]

That sounds delightful and full of the joys of spring!

[osprey_archer]

The lilies of the valley are coming up by the patio and everything!

[ethelmay]

Note that kingfishers raise and lower their head feathers, so if you're thinking "That can't be a kingfisher, the head is too small," it might still be one, if you see what I mean. That happened to me quite recently watching a couple of kingfishers on Orcas Island.

[osprey_archer]

I think if I can get a clear view of it I'll be able to tell one way or another... we'll see if it ever gives me that clear view, though.

[sholio]

How delightful! That sounds like a wonderful spring experience. You are so lucky on the nesting geese - I hope you get to see goslings!

[osprey_archer]

I'm so hopeful for the goslings!

There are ducks on the pond too, but I think goslings AND ducklings in one season is too much to hope for. And I'm not sure the ducks are nesting anyway. Possibly just chilling out to eat some pond weed.

[asakiyume]

A kingfisher would be marvelous! I've only seen them about three times (once in the Amazon, yay! But twice here), but they were so beautiful each of those times!

And hurray for future goslings!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, this is the anti-kingfisher side of things, sadly: one doesn't see them that often, so what are the chances that there's one just hanging around my pond? But I suppose even the rarest bird has to have a home somewhere...

[lirazel]

This all sounds lovely! I'm glad you're so blessed with birds!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it's really lovely! I knew the pond might attract waterfowl, but it seems that a lot of not specifically water birds also like having it around, too.

[littlerhymes]

So many birds! The geese have also moved in... new neighbours...

[osprey_archer]

A little concerned if the geese will be GOOD neighbors, but they seemed to have picked the yard at the far end of the pond for their hang-out spot, so at least I don't have to worry about goose poop.

[cyphomandra]

Your cottage wildlife sound lovely! Also this made me look up what North American kingfishers look like, as our local kingfishers (kōtare) are a fairly common sight near where I live. They’re such neat, deft little birds.

(My parents have a terrifying compost heap halfway down a hillside in dense bush, when I was young my sister and I had to take turns taking the scraps down there and holding on to a tree to swing out over the heap to dump the scraps, which were then hotly fought over by rats and possums, yay)

[osprey_archer]

Sometimes it's maddening to realize how many different birds English settlers named after birds back in England. What do you MEAN the robins in England actually look like the fat little birds in picture books! No bird actually looks like that! Except apparently they do...

The rat 'n' possum fight is my nightmare compost scenario. The backyard is simply not big enough to isolate the compost from the house so I would have a ringside seat.

[luzula]

Oh, how lovely to potentially have a kingfisher close by!

[osprey_archer]

I haven't seen the kingfisher again since I posted, but I DID see a heron flying away from the pond (did not actually see it in the pond so I am merely assuming it stopped at the pond...), so there's a lot of lovely bird life in the area!