Identifying birds by sound…

… is like dancing architecture. Or something. Yesterday I managed to go for a walk, the first one this week. As I was standing in a clearing I heard a strange bird call, getting louder, coming towards me. Since it flew against a light sky all I could see was the silhouette: Small head, size a bit bigger than a jay, slender. Relatively small wings. And I had its call. If human voices are unsuitable for reproducing bird songs, human letters are so bad it doesn’t even make sense to get started. The best description I could give is ” sounds like your V-belt needs replacement” and if you put that into google you get 1.000.000 hits for V-belts.

I finally found a site with bird sounds that allowed you to browse by families and going from the size and shape I could finally identify it as a green woodpecker.

green woodpecker

Maybe it was even this fellow?

I also found out that the mysterious bird I’ve heard so often but never have seen is a black woodpecker.

Monday Mercurial: Fleckchen has grown!

I could have sworn i had scheduled these for last Monday, but they did not appear. There isn’t even a draft, which is something WordPress saves about every 30 seconds. the only explanation i have is that yes,  actually dreamed it.

Yet the pics already have tags and alt text, so I’m going to blame it on WordPress eating the post.

bunny

©Giliell, all rights reserved

bunny

©Giliell, all rights reserved

bunny

©Giliell, all rights reserved
Molli did not want to hold still for a pic.

bunny

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Friday Feathers

We have many wonderful reader contributions which I’ll post the next week (no, I haven’t forgotten those). For now it’s the rest of the birds that I met walking through a Winter Wonderland.

On the first day I walked past a shrubbery that is always full of birds, but as we were approaching they all flew away, but all in a certain direction. Some landed in that shrubbery and then took off as well. we soon spotted the reason for this:

common buzzard

©Giliell, all rights reserved

It’s a common buzzard, but they are not frequent in this particular area as it offers little space for soaring.

Walking further we then saw our usual small friends.

chaffinch

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I cannot quite decide between sparrow and lady chaffinch with the back and tail being hidden.

crow

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Crows are always slightly out of focus, I’m afraid.

crow

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Or hiding.

crow

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Or leaving.

great tit

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But you can always count on the tits.

 

Friday Feathers

These are from David who notes:

If it’s a murder of Crows

and

It’s a Parliament of Owls,

then surely it must be …

A brothel of shags?

shags

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

shags

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

 

To me a s a German, English collective nouns are both a delight and a bane. I mean, a pride of lions and a murmuration of starlings?

In German it’s quite easy: If it flies or swims, it’s a swarm (Schwarm), with the exception of marine mammals (they have Schule, schools like in English). Carnivores that hunt together are a Rudel, a pack like wolves. Grazers? Herde (herd). Trees? Forest, unless you’re my husband who once famously couldn’t remember “forest” and kept talking about a “pack of trees”.