Tag: birds

The squawking of the feral parakeets

Four green birds in flight against a blue sky.

Green and red parakeet in a palm tree, grooming its leg.

Sometimes I’ll hear the squawking of the feral parakeets that live in town as they fly past. Usually I don’t have a camera with me, but one time I managed to catch four of them flying (not very detailed, as you can see), and once I managed to catch one that had stopped in a palm tree long enough for me to use the zoom lens.

#birds #parakeets #FeralParakeets #parrots #nature #FeralParrots

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I heard the squawking and went for my camera, but this is the best I could get. Still, you can at least see the green color and a bit of the red on one of their heads.

After they flew on, I saw a few others diving out of palm trees and wheeling back up in the direction they’d come from.

I’ve seen and heard the feral parakeets before, and managed to get some decent pictures a few weeks ago. I can’t be certain these are the same parakeet species as that one, but it seems likely since they’re introduced.

Previous observation of mitred parakeet: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26590485

On iNaturalist

TODO: Combine with this post and others.

Since I’ve been posting observations to iNaturalist I’ve *definitely* noticed more differences among plants…

Since I’ve been posting observations to iNaturalist I’ve *definitely* noticed more differences among plants, whether walking around town or hiking through nature. Even just differences between types of weeds.

Link: BBC on “Plant blindness”

Why ‘plant blindness’ matters — and what you can do about it

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Of course, I’ve also started noticing differences among local birds more, too. I used to basically classify them as:
– pigeon
– seagull
– crow
– um, small bird?

Plus occasional ducks and geese near the water.

Now I can at least tell pigeons from doves, sparrows from finches (most of the time), ducks from coots, and pick out mockingbirds and starlings. And most of the cranes I’ve seen turn out to have been egrets.

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@cs jokes that you know you’re getting old when you start paying attention to birds, and links to What’s the Difference Between Pigeons and Doves? on Mental Floss.

Heh. Fair enough. Though there are particular species found in Southern California that are named doves (such as the white-and-gray mourning doves that perch alone on telephone wires calling “Oo! Oo! Oo!” for what seems like hours on end) or pigeons (such as the gray-and-blue-green common pigeons that tend to flock in groups, perch on ledges and try to steal dropped french fries).

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