Spyke
birdingbybirdie

Rule updates and some other stuff!

Hello everyone!

I hope you all have been doing well this past year! I know I have kind of neglected /c/birding a little bit, but I am still here (somewhat, at any rate).

I have updated the rules a bit to make them a bit clearer and also because I have noticed that some people have (probably unknowingly) posted AI-generated content, so I have added a rule that explicitly prohibits the posting of such content. Please review the new rules and feel free to suggest something if you feel like I have missed something or worded something badly! :-)

I will also be adding another mod soon that I feel like should help keep /c/birding a bit more tidy in the future as I don't really actively use Lemmy anymore. It's someone I know who's mostly active on Mastodon but he'll create an account on Lemmy and help with moderation here.

If you have any other questions, feel free to comment! I'll be monitoring this account a bit more closely again for the foreseeable future (at least until I've added the new mod).

View original on lemmy.world
51
Comments4
birdingbydual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️

My Brother's Bird [OC]

Another from the short stack of physical photographs I recently reclaimed, which I've finally gotten around to scanning.

This is (was) one of my brother's birds, which appears to be a peregrine falcon. I took this snap in his rickety barn that he'd converted to a kind of rookery, with a wind-up disposable camera back when I was just a wee fledgling myself and as you can see also in rather poor light. He had several birds throughout his falconry career and as far as I know he did not keep them all at his place at the same time. I was not paying close attention at the time. I'm not an ornithologist now, and I certainly wasn't then. And alas, he's no longer around so I can't ask him for details.

I do know he also personally owned a gyrfalcon/Barbary falcon hybrid although I don't think I ever saw that bird in person and if I did I certainly didn't take a picture of her.

View original on lemmy.world
67
Comments4
birdingbyrescue_toaster

Nesting platform for doves.

Does anyone have any experience/knowledge with mourning dove nesting behavior?

The top left platform was used continually during the nesting season the previous two years after I built it. I think I had 4 successive pairs of fledglings each summer.

At the beginning of this season, in may, the first fledgings were taken by crows. I have a backyard security camera that I was able to watch the action. The nest sits on a beam beneath my pergola and there's not enough vertical space for a crow to land, but one managed to figure how to basically fall from above and land sideways and get his head in there to grab a baby dove before completely falling down.

The nest has been scoped out by crows before but this was the first time one was taken.

So I built the lower right one, which puts the nesting area about six inches back, hoping it will be enough that the crows won't be able to get them. But it hasn't been used at all this season. Doves will occasionally check it out for a few days in a row. One pair even began building a nest but then abandoned it.

Also not shown is a small roof above the pergola I built to protect the nest from rain. I also made it a tiny bit bigger as the mentioned Crow was trying to get his face between the pergola slats but couldn't reach the squabs. I'm also hoping this slightly bigger roof makes the platform more hidden from predators.

I don't really want to reduce the size of the roof because of the crow issue.

So why was the slightly smaller platform so successful, and this one isn't? Any strategies for attracting doves to nest?

View original on lemmy.zip
48
Comments1
birding | Spyke