Backyard Birding

The waterbody we live on is named a lake but really it is more of a pond. There’s another pond adjacent to this one with a few other houses on it as well and it also has a lot of wildlife. Here you see a single roseate spoonbill and a plethora of black bellied whistling ducks.

The ducks are very fun but noisy. Sometimes I can hear them inside my house at 11pm or later, just whistling away! I have no idea what they are up to at that hour, but so they are sometimes. (OK, according to multiple resources they are nocturnal feeders. There ya go!)

I took a few shots of them wading on the mud flat (which normally isn’t a mud flat, thank you drought conditions) before wandering off down the way to our deck on the pond. Something spooked them and they took off, flying around in circles over the pond a few times before returning to where they had been.

Covertly, I got behind my neighbor’s Chinese tallow that is just on the other side of our property boundary. It worked as a good blind to watch them as they flew in for a landing, but we need to talk to her about helping her cut that invasive monstrosity down.

This time I spooked them!

The lonely spooonbill. This is the first time I’ve seen a spoonbill on the pond which makes me curious if it will stick around for the long term or if it was just a stopover.

This great blue heron was much more spooked than the ducks were, flying off before I even got close to the edge of the pond, honking in protest as it flew away.

A great white egret, likely one of the birds that roosts on our trees sometimes. I’ve got random feathers all over my yard as proof.

And a finally the tiny bird I sought out as I was laying on our deck on my back. I am by far not a birder but I heard several small birds making noise and zipping from tree to tree when one landed above me. The black head made me think of a black-capped vireo, but as I was typing those words into my search bar Google was trying to offer me suggestions, and black-capped chickadee flashed across. With that in my head I decided to Google the chickadee after the vireo. The vireo photos didn’t match what I had seen so I went off to search the black-capped chickadee, which after seeing the photos made me get excited that I’d identified it. However I also knew of the Carolina chickadee, but not really remembering or knowing what it looked like exactly I thought I’d Google it to compare. Oh boy! They are practically identical!

You can see a comparison here between the two, but because I didn’t get very good identifying shots I’m not really sure. However, if I go by their range maps then likely what I’ve got are Carolina chickadees.