Hummingbird Dogfights on my Back Porch

Two of my great pleasures in life are playing the didgeridoo on my back porch swing–a dual-hammock-chair  loveseaty thing–and the numerous hummingbirds that come to the feeder that hangs nearby.

Four species of hummingbird are regular visitors. Speedy Black-Chinned hummers zoom in, flashing bright purple in the twilight. Delicate Calliopes perch and look about nervously as they steal rapid sips. On occasion, a Rufous hummer will pay a visit. And with trilling wingbeats, the Broad-taileds come in.

The last of these, the Broad-tailed hummers, are aggressors among all the others. On seeing any other bird arrive, one male among them comes whirring in from the huge serviceberry bush to confront and give chase to any interlopers.

The Broad-tailed hummers perform aerial combat stunts. When a male challenges the resident who dominates the feeder, they face off for a split second in mid-air, hovering with their tails fanning at each other. Then the resident lunges in. Wingtips buzz against each other for a moment until one relents and is pursued by the other.

When this happens, several others come to the feeder from all directions, enjoying a few moments of peace. They feed. Minor squabbles occur, and they jockey for positions. Soon the dominant Broad-tailed returns and, one by one, clears out each of the trespassers.

A Backyard Pair o’ Ducks

By mountain torrents swung the birdfeeder, eschewing its contents onto the snow.

Through thaws and freezes the seed feed sank into the snow.

By springs warming, it emerged again, a granary pile from receding snow.

To it they come, and Rachel and I watch. One brown female. One curl-tailed male. Two mallards who waddle up from the stream, across my dormant lawn, to dine together in the mid-morning sun.

T: What’s another name for a crate full of duckings?

R: A box of quackers?

New Sandhill Cranes

A pair of Sandhill Cranes are tending to their two newly-hatched chicks out in the meadow by the barn in Park City. The chicks follow their parents with fawning curiosity, still walking a bit clumsily below their subtly graceful parents.

The Resplendent Quetzal

Thirteen years ago, just after graduating from my university and still not very well employed, I decided to take a trip to Guatemala to learn to speak Spanish. I spent a month there, most of it in Antigua at a language school that purports to use it's proceeds for studying and preserving some of the native languages of the Maya's descendents.

On the final week there, I chose to travel and see the country. One of the places I briefly visited was the Biotope del Quetzal, a biological reserve specifically intended for the preservation of the Resplendent Quetzal, a rather fantastic looking bird that dwells exclusively in the highland cloudforests of Central America.

Prior to going to Guatemala, I read John Maslow's Bird of Life, Bird of Death, a naturalist's travelogue from the tumultuous nineteen eighties, when the Guatemalan people were suffering a reign of terror that resulted from the tensions between paranoid neofascism and socialist-leaning rebels, and fueled by the Reagan administration's big stick policy that tore apart the entire region. (This was a period during which the Spanish verb for "to disappear" became a noun used to refer to people abducted—and murdered, sometimes en masse–by the army. Trials are finally being conducted to bring to justice some of these crimes, although many of the people are reluctant to bear witness, still haunted by the not-so-distant past.)

Anyway, Maslow's story of his quest to see the endangered Quetzal left me with an itch to see this beautiful bird, and my journey thirteen years ago left me unfulfilled. I saw no Quetzals. I did see a huge beetle that was nearly the size of my fist. And, I saw the cloudforest, albeit very briefly as my traveling companion, an intense Israeli from Tel Aviv, didn't really grasp what my fascination for the place was all about.

Today, in Costa Rica's Monteverde cloudforest reserve, I finally fulfilled this thirteen year yen to see the Resplendent Quetzal. (Not without some inconvenient false starts, such as accidentally getting on the wrong bus and starting out for the distant capitol city of San Jose insteadof getting the early start to the reserve that my wife and I had originally intended.) We saw a pair, a male and a female, low in the trees, not far from the trail. One of the guides told us that they were probably seeking a tree cavity to make into a nesting site.

My wife asked whether finally seeing the bird left me feeling fulfilled. I told her that I wanted to see a Three-wattled Bell Bird.

Return of the Cranes

Yesterday, my local snowboarding buddyErin and I were bemoaning the warm weather and rapid deterioration of the Park City snow base. I hate the decline of winter.

On my commute to work this morning, as I was turning toward Midway, Utah on my way to Provo, I saw my first Sandhill Cranes of the year, three of them flying over the Provo River. For a few thrilling moments, I completely forgot about winter's end as spring's emergence eclipsed everything else.

Victoria Birds

Well, it happened. Goal complete. Superb Fairy-wren found. Ahhhh.

I'm in Australia for the first time, and since I'm on a disappointingly short business trip here, I chose a small goal bird for this trip. Simply to see a Superb Fairy-wren. I had tried to see one near the Yarra river in Melbourne, but that didn't happen.

Now I am at Aitken Hill conference center, and they have some nice, landscaped grounds with a few small ponds and a little riparian-ish area. It's nice to walk around, with several bird species to see. (I also saw a kangaroo yesterday.) Several Fairy-wrens were in the area, males and females.

One thing I noticed is that there are several superlative Fairy-wrens in the Australian bird list: Splendid Fairy-wrens, Lovely Fairy-wrens. Makes one wonder about the other birds who don't get a nice descriptor. I mean, there's no "Mediocre" Fairy-wren. The Variegated Fairy-wren sure got dealt a lousy moniker.

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Here's the some other birds I have seen at Aitken Hill. Photos are credited via html links back to their source pages.Pacific Black Duck

Hardhead

Masked Lapwing

Eastern Rosella
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Willie Wagtail
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White-plumed Honeyeater
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Crested Pigeon
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Fairy Wren Update from Down Under

Okay…I went on a walk with Ed Anderson along the Yarra River in Melbourne yesterday. No Superb Fairy Wrens…