Are you a bird watcher?

Talk about timing! I just got done watching a pair of red tail hawks circling around above my house when I got home. So yes, I'm a bird watcher. I was hoping I would see them reduce the squirrel population around here but it didn't happen this time.

Yes. I have a couple of bird feeders in my yard so I can watch them feed. Most Cardinals, blue jays, and some finches. An occasional woodpecker, or raven stops by. I even had a Carolina Wren nest in a potted plant on my patio this year.

Like Mountain Man, I also have a hawk that comes to my neighborhood, and he thankfully does thin out the squirrel population. But since he has done so, he seems to have moved on for another food source. 

Jann, I was a dedicated birdwatcher between 1990-1997.

An out-of-town builder was about to construct some low-income apartments down in a flood plain below my home in Washington State. In the process of advocating against that, I learned the birds...there were hundreds of species...because that flood plain is also a flyway for migration.

Well, thankfully no apts. got built there...the flood plain has been getting 100-year floods every few years now. Fifteen feet of water, gushing like out of a firehose, about five times since then...people could have died.

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But now I do recognize birds like this wonderful hawk, a Northern Harrier,      I watched him and his mate hunt all last winter.

I watch bird nests on my computer via live cams. It's pretty cool watching eggs hatch and check in a few times a day and watch the hatchlings grow.

Yes, a few months ago I happened to see something funny and beautiful. It was a pair of Turtle Doves who mate for life, watching a struggling married couple work out their day. Said Doves sat on that wall watching, and cooing until the couple had worked everything out and went in their house, and then they flew away together.

I'm not a true bird watcher; but they do catch my attention, and I enjoy them.  We have a flock of wild green parrots in my neighborhood that keep me fascinated .... Also some pretty redheaded woodpeckers.

At my home I have a sanctuary for birds.

This year marks a new record for us.

26 birds were born and, I saw 18 first flights.

Yes, we have a multitude of different birds in England. Along with the common birds I had a woodpecker out the front of my bungalow in the Summer, I filmed him. Also had a hawk fly down that was pretty amazing. I have the sparrows, and bluetits. Alot of the parakeets are taking over. The Magpies often raid the nests for young, I had to deal with a casualty of that, the parents (blackbirds) were so distressed, brave though, kept swooping down to attack it. I have geese fly over my house at 5pm everyday. There are more to see at my local National park. I've brought up Sparrows and Robins when they had fallen from the nest and been abandoned.  Last week I walked into town with my better half, the sky was full of swifts migrating, fantastic sight. My favourite has always been the Robin, he makes me think of my late Grandad.

We have a very leafy  garden and wrens, finches and wattle birds have all made their nests within a few metres of our sun room, so we have plenty of them to watch. They're really entertaining in the springtime when their young come out to play.

Never to the extent of having a pad and pencil, a pair of binoculars, and a weatherproof copy of Roger Tory Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds with me, but I do try to be aware of what is going on when I am outdoors.

I saw only the second hummingbird of my life in my back yard just this last summer.

(And yes, I possessed many of Peterson's field guides when I was in my early 20's.)

I just remembered---the bird that got me interested turned out to be a "tufted titmouse---Baeolophus bicolor.)

More of an identifier than a watcher. Though when I was a baby, watching birds outside was the only way to get me to stop crying

No but I hear them outside in the morning and sometimes the evening.