An American Robin, sweet…

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Last year I caught this shot in an old abandoned shop I was looking at.

A sweet little chickadee-dee-dee … one of my favorite birds…

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I took this one from the kitchen window at my grandmas house, you get pretty close and the birds can’t see you.

Birds certainly do like windows, don’t they?

Me too.

Look at the birdy in the window…escaping, hiding, drying?

What a beautiful little birdy and the thistles are lovely!

Is that wire thing to keep birds out or to keep them safe? Guess this pigeon made it work for him.

Red-tailed black cockatoo

Originally uploaded by dark orange

The bird of the day today is the Red-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus banksii). It is also known as Banksian- or Bank’s Black Cockatoo. It is found in Australia, those Australians, they get to see all the cool and rare birds. =) This is a big bird folks, about 24 inches LONG! Wow, two feet of bird. Despite its size, this very noisy bird prefers to eat mostly Eucalyptus seeds. A bird after my own heart. =)

They can live up to or even longer than 50 years! Wow, a long-living, seed-eating bird. Nice.

Growing up, my grandmother often had cockatoos but hers were white with yellow or red tufts. These are the more common type of cockatoo pets. They were noisy too but they were not as colorful or interesting.

The males and females look different. This is known as sexual dimorphism, in case you didn’t know. =) I didn’t before now. They are also being smuggled illegally into the U.S. and other countries. This is illegal and wrong. People always want to have exotic pets, don’t they?

Eastern Rosella

Originally uploaded by ianmichaelthomas

Today’s bird of the day is the Eastern Rosella, also known as Platycercus eximius. It is native to Australia and Tasmania but now is also found in New Zealand.

I read you can have this bird as a pet but it is not very “cuddly”. Hahahaha.

This bird photograph is from flickr user ianmichaelthomas. Here is what he had to say about this photograph (direct copy and paste):

Another wild and free Australian native parrot! Australia can rightly be called the land of parrots.

There are about 80 species in Australia.

Eastern Rosella

Another iconic Australian native parrot, the Eastern Rosella is spectacularly coloured, and similar in size to the Crimson rosella.
Eastern rosellas are the mascot/emblem of Aussie food company, Rosella – A beautiful eastern rosella was featured on tins of jam, soup etc – a joke I used to tell my friends is that the secret ingredient is the eastern rosella – they give zest to the jam! Purely a joke…
Eastern rosellas are quite common within their range on the eastern Australian seaboard, but I have found them a VERY difficult bird to get good photographs of!

They are usually extremely wary of people, very flighty and easily spooked by other birds in the area, let alone people.

This day was most unusual at Pound Bend, Warrandyte State Park – I found this Eastern Rosella happy to stay still and pose for my photos! And I took heaps! This was the first and only time in 2 solid years of trying to take photos of these birds in the wild that I found one who co-operated! Unfortunately, where it sat was in very deep bush, and my camera had great trouble getting proper focus. Manual focus stopped working months ago – so I am forced to rely on auto-focus – which is unreliable at best in such busy and complicated backgrounds such as this found in thick bushes.
Even so – it was a thrill, nearly beyond works to have this time.

Stellar’s Jay

Originally uploaded by Life of David

The Stellar Jay, another bird found locally, is today’s bird of the day. It’s scientific name is Cyanocitta stelleri. It is common throughout the U.S. but I love it. I like to look at them. They are interesting and beautiful.

They like seeds, nuts, berries, fruit, invertebrates, eggs, other bird’s nestlings (GASP!), acorns, conifer seeds and other things like them. It will join you for a picnic, if you bring the right food.

You can read more about the Stellar Jay, even hear its call, here.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Stellers_Jay.html