Posted on 12/17/2010 6:33:21 AM PST by eastforker
I don't ever remember seing this many birds in one place at the same time.After shooting these pics, another wave just as big came through.
The birds! The birds! Quick, board up the windows and bar the doors! You are so doomed, Tippi.
Yes we get those migrating Starlings here in Atlanta also although I don’t recall seeing that many at a time. they come through the yard and literally clean out everything.
“High Anxiety.....you win.......”
Those look like starlings to me. A flock about that big has a winter roosting site at the end of our street in a big cottonwood tree. You should hear the dawn chorus. It’s amazing !
About 5 years or so ago I had found a waterbird dead by the electric fence, thought it got hung up or something and was killed. I picked it up and thew it in the garbage. In less than a week I came down with the damn west nile virus.
Must be a shot of the House of Representatives. Too damned many to be the senate.
Nevertheless, both houses are larded with bird-brains.
Really- just by touching it ? That’s scary. Did you recover from it ok ? I know it can be bad in certain people. There was a guy around here who got it river rafting- he ended up paralyzed. He was a young man,too.
It had me down bad for about three weeks or so.Eventualy got over it.
Are they tired Starlings?
Last year in Springfield, MO I saw a flock of whooping cranes flying south. Take that pattern, shrink the numbers, but enlarge the birds and picture it in slow motion. The absolute most amazingly beautiful display of flying I have EVER seen. Magnificent. I even had my free 2 meg kodak camera with me, but the 20 second videos didn’t do them justice. (Well, it was equal to a slow motion landing of a jet at an air show.)
These birds look like Grackles. If they are spotted they are starlings, if luminescent blue/black, Grackles. They are hilarious to watch. As they walk they pick up a leaf, throw it, and look for bugs.
I once saw about 50-100 mourning doves in a couple of trees. THAT was weird.
“Clariiisss, I can smell your...birds nest”
I say "almost" because sometimes rusty blackbirds flock in winter (as do Brewer's).
However, rusty blackbirds are somewhat rare and prefer swampy areas in winter. Brewer's congregate in huge numbers in open areas.
My last post was went for eastforker, not you.
So it would be best for all if you didn't read it.
lol
They’re just resting!
Up here in SD, we get invaded by the migration every spring and they are noisy, annoying & leave a disgusting mess everywhere. They dive bomb the dogs as well as us when we walk across the yard as the grain bin is between our house & the shop so I keep a rolled up newspaper on the deck and bang it against the deck cover post(sounds like a gun shot) to scare them off to the next door neighbors grove(1/4 mile away).
But you also have lark buntings in summer, so that's a nice plus...
we also have the starlings and they are much worse than the blackbirds even though they are quite smaller. They move in, in the spring and don’t leave until fall and try to nest everywhere, especially in the gazebo above the hot tub & under the deck cover by the front door. Nasty little creatures and nothing we have tried thus far hinders them.
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