Bird is the Word

by Kimberly & Michael

Now that you have that song stuck in your head (hehehehe) let's do a run down (should that be hyphenated? No, right? No amount of degrees in English will help me to know when a word should be hyphenated) of the birds we've seen so far this year. Although the list is so far pretty modest, we've both added some birds to our life list (that means it's a bird we've never seen before) so we're feeling pretty good about it.

Since I'm the one writing this post (K), I'm going to put my list (with pictures of some of my favorites) and let Michael add any birds to it that I don't have.

Kimberly's Birds 2012
1/1/12:
1. Rock Dove (for all you non-birders out there, that's a pigeon)
2. Great-tailed Grackle
3. American Kestrel:

 (photo from here: http://www.naturefocused.com/photo-gallery-8.html)
4. American Coot
5. Ring-billed Gull
6. Green-winged Teal
7. Kildeer
8. Northern Shoveler
9. Lesser Yellowlegs
10. Savannah Sparrow
11. Ruddy Duck
12. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
13. Blue-wined Teal
14. Yellow-rumped Warbler
15. American Robin
16. Eastern Phoebe
17. Brown Creeper (These guys are really cool; as you can see in the picture they're tiny, and they blend in really well with the bark on trees, but the really neat thing is how they feed. They start toward a bottom of a tree and then they hop up it going around the trunk in a spiral as they peck for food. Once they get toward the top, they hover down to a neighboring tree and start again. The first time I saw one, it was pointed out by the ecocritic Dana Phillips at Washington-on the Brazos. How weird is that, I went bird watching with the chair of my dissertation and a famous ecocritic (or at least what counts as famous for ecocritics) --Michael's note). Here's a picture:

(photo from here: http://tinyurl.com/7qpm3mr) 18. Northern Cardinal

19. American Wigeon
20. Carolina Chickadee
21. Hermit Thrush
22. Tufted Titmouse
23. Carolina Wren
24. Black Vulture
25. Northern Mockingbird

1/3/12
26. American Crow
27. Blue Jay
28. European Starling
29. House Sparrow
30. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
31. Gadwall
32. White-throated Sparrow
33. House Finch
34. Red-bellied Woodpecker (We have a couple of these around the house. They seem to like the pecan trees and in the warmer months they jackhammer on our neighbors tin roof.)
35. Turkey Vulture

1/5/12 (These were seen in Seattle, WA)
36. Mallard
37. Bufflehead:

(photo from here: http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/bufflehead)
38. Red-winged Black bird
39. Common Goldeneye:

(photo from here: http://tinyurl.com/7paae6s)
40. Canada Goose

1/8/12 (In Seattle, WA)
41. Bald Eagle

1/11/12 (back in TX)
42. Ring-necked Duck
43. Great Blue Heron
44. Eurasian Collared Dove
45. Great Egret

In future posts we'll give you more details about the birds and bird watching. The bird stuff will be less boring in the future. :-D