[Here ya go Janet!]

Here ya go Janet!   Very pretty bird.

Thanks Donna!

We checked Sibley's and we THINK (do feel free to correct - even Rich said to put it before you all) this is an Arizona Dark-eyed Junko.  We never saw one before Saturday.  We saw another one on Sunday along the Pax River (Lower Marlboro).  What say you?  Same bird as Aafke's or a different one?

If I did this right, here's the two together...yours and Aafke's

I think it is the guys!  Rich deals with a LOT of dealerships in MD an VA and stray birds are common in and around the dealership.  One guy has a pet chicken running around the shop - rescued from the road near the eastern shore chicken farms.  "Watch the Chicken" is the cry when you first show up.  :-)

See...........men are sensitive!

   I don't know about that, but these are blue-collar guys, driving around in their pick-ups, with their dogs and gun racks in the back.   

     

I think it is the guys!  Rich deals with a LOT of dealerships in MD an VA and stray birds are common in and around the dealership.  One guy has a pet chicken running around the shop - rescued from the road near the eastern shore chicken farms.  "Watch the Chicken" is the cry when you first show up.  :-)

See...........men are sensitive!

[Here ya go Janet!]

Here ya go Janet!   Very pretty bird.

WHEN SATURN of Virginia Beach closes and moves out of its Laskin Road showroom this spring, it will be leaving behind more than memories of a longtime Beach car dealership.

Bert, the ring-billed gull, will no longer have a winter home, said Gary Williamson, a sales consultant at Saturn.

Williamson has been taken with the 5-year-old friendship his service department colleague Ernie Hardy has had with the gull.

Bert, who arrived on the department's windowsill looking for a handout one Saturday in December 2004, has been befriended by Hardy ever since.

"He was pecking on the window, and I went out to feed him," Hardy said, "and he started coming every day.

"I named him Bert because my name was Ernie."

At the time Hardy had recently joined the National Audubon Society, so he was particularly interested in his new friend. He was able to identify the bird as a first year ring-billed gull because of his mottled plumage.

Now a handsome grown- up gray and white with a black tail, Bert lives up to his name with a wide black ring circling his yellow bill. No one knows if Bert really is a male, but the name seems to fit.

Bert is a creature of habit. Every winter, he migrates back to Saturn from summer nesting grounds in Canada. He arrives almost like clockwork to tap on the service department windows.

Instinctively, Hardy knew that Bert would arrive a certain Saturday this December and "when I looked, there he was," Hardy said.

Every day, until he leaves to migrate back in late March, Bert comes to be fed, almost as if for breakfast lunch and dinner.

In between meals he's often perched on the corner of the showroom roof where he fends off other gulls interested in his unique dining arrangements. When he's hungry, Bert flies down to peck at the service department windows to get attention.

"Customers will ask, 'What's that?' " said Hardy. "That's our pet bird. He's hungry."

"He gets really irate when you don't feed him," noted Williamson. "Bert's squawking again!"

"I can tell if he's nearby because we know his voice," said Lisa Horan, who also works in the service department. "You hear his squawk."

Hardy generally feeds pieces of trail bar to Bert, and Horan feeds him trail mix. Whatever the treat, Bert does not like to share. He defends his territory.

"It's Bert's no-fly zone." Williamson said.

They all worry about what will happen next winter when Bert arrives and finds Saturn has closed up shop and moved to Cavalier Mazda in Chesapeake. Hardy hopes that someone else will take up the friendship when he's gone. With Bert's persistence, it's highly likely.

"He has that moxie," Williamson said. "He has that piz azz."

It doesn't take much to get me thinking about eagles. The latest trigger was the cover of Audubon. It shows two sparring bald eagles, the spectacular Grand Prize-winning image in the magazine's inaugural photo awards.

Most people love eagles, and not just birders. Is there an American over age 4 that would not recognize one? Best of all, their population is growing. The odds of seeing a wild bald eagle here in DuPage County have never been better.

Last September, at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge near Toledo, Ohio, the first bird I spotted was a bald eagle on the wing. Was this a trained bird, commissioned to greet and impress first-time refuge visitors like me? No, the bird was simply patrolling its home territory - one of several resident eagles at Ottawa.

It was also the first eagle I'd ever seen in Ohio, my home state.

As a young boy in Canton, a flyover flock of Canada geese was an exciting and somewhat rare occasion. We'd stop what we were doing to marvel at the occasional V-formation. But the chances of a bald eagle sighting were zero. In the 1970s the species was fighting for its very survival. Pesticide poisoning had pushed our national symbol to the brink of extinction.

Fortunately, some smart people acted just in time. The chemical DDT was banned in 1972, and the Endangered Species Act debuted a year later. These steps allowed bald eagles to stage a remarkable comeback that continues today. The species has been off the federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife since 2007.

On the Dec. 19 Christmas Bird Count, seven bald eagles were spotted in DuPage and eastern Kane counties. The sightings were mostly along the Fox River, but one occurred at Blackwell Forest Preserve in Warrenville.

At Greene Valley Forest Preserve in Naperville, where the DuPage Birding Club studies raptor migration each fall from the top of the landfill "mountain," some 21 bald eagles were sighted during the 2009 count period. Three golden eagles flew over too!

Of course I dream of spotting an eagle soaring high over my yard. Hey, it could happen.

It did happen for Candace Barry outside her home in West Chicago. She encountered a baldy in October when taking pictures of the fall color. She first saw it on the ground just 50 yards away, then managed a few good photos of the bird in flight.

"I truly felt blessed to walk out and find an eagle," Barry said. "My dad saw one about 60 years ago in his backyard and I always thought that was a great story. I never imagined I would have my own to tell."

Of course, for most of us, a backyard eagle is a long shot. We'll need lots of patience and luck. But what about seeing an eagle now? We have some options.

Rather unbelievably, a few birds can be viewed this time of year at the Little Calumet River on the far south side of Chicago. They've been visiting every winter since 2004, according to Joe Lill of the Chicago Audubon Society. The 9th Ward, not known for its scenic beauty, treats the eagles like celebrities.

The Mississippi and Illinois rivers are even more of a sure thing. In winter, bald eagles congregate near the locks and dams, grabbing fish where the water stays open. For anyone who appreciates nature, it's a spectacle not to be missed.

The nearest highly reliable viewing place is Starved Rock State Park in Utica, about 85 miles south of central DuPage County. For some excellent eagle watching, go to the Illinois Waterway Visitors Center between now and early March. The center is located at lock and dam No. 4 on the Illinois River, across from the park. More information is online at flocktotherock.com or call (800) 746-0550.

Meanwhile, don't give up on adding a bald eagle to your yard list. Broadly speaking, the birds are most definitely in the neighborhood.

Cradling a ruby-throated hummingbird in her fist, Doreen Cubie poked its needle-like beak into a sugar water feeder on Skidaway Island Sunday.

"See, she's sticking her tongue out," she said. "They lap it up like a cat."

Moments before, Cubie had captured the bird by hanging its feeder inside a wire cage. When the hungry hummer flew in, she dropped the line that held the door open. Cubie weighed the bird, a hefty 3.8 grams or about as much as a packet of sugar, and quickly affixed a tiny aluminum band around its leg.

Her work is part of a larger effort to understand the habits of these birds, which seem to be getting more common as winter residents in Savannah and throughout the Southeast.

She records each bird's band number - its new identity - along with information such as sex, weight and exact location of capture. The National Bird Banding Laboratory in Maryland compiles the data and keeps track of recaptures, which tell the story of the birds' travels.

Or it would tell that story if ruby-throated hummingbirds were recaptured more frequently, which is why she's banding more of them. Cubie says the Savannah area's winter hummingbirds may be migrants from Canada, and the hummingbirds that summer here may migrate to the tropics for the winter. But so far, no ruby-throated hummingbirds have been recaptured to prove it.

Cubie is a freelance science writer based just north of Charleston. Assigned to write about hummingbird banding for Audubon Magazine in 2004, the already avid birder became fascinated with the process and apprenticed to get her federal license. She's now one of only about 200 hummingbird banders in the U.S.

Like many people, Cubie admires hummingbirds. She finds them acrobatic, curious, even fearless.

"They're one of the few birds that makes eye contact with you," she said.

Landings resident and skilled birder Russ Wigh helped arrange Cubie's Savannah banding trip, networking with other birders to map out the best places on Skidaway to capture hummingbirds.

That's how Carolyn Buttram ended up with "her" hummingbird in her hand ever so briefly Sunday. Cubie allowed her to release the bird after it was caught and banded on Buttram's front porch.

"I have a feeder outside my bedroom window," Buttram said. "It's her first drink of the day, I believe."

That makes sense to Cubie, who noted that hummingbirds feed heavily on insects and so use sugar water feeders mainly as an energy boost.

"It's like their Starbucks," she said.

Just captured this shot of mom rolling the egg.  Sweet. 

  Looking good, hope it's cured

Is that a "snack" to our right of the main cam?

Gee, how'd I miss that? Looks like 2 feets sticking up. Beauty....where are you? Maybe she's keeping it on ice.

  Looking good, hope it's cured

It's thawing out....

  Maybe not

Eggs are looking good and toasty.

Just now momma left for a break.

It's thawing out....

Aren't dovekies the birds that Quest was catching in Cape Cod?

Yep   

Great shot of the female closeup