Veery      (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

MAK reminded me that I wanted to post the song of the Veery, which is one of my favorite bird songs to hear in the woods.  The bird is often so well camoflaged against the leaf litter on the forest floor, that I don't actually see Veerys often, but their song is what makes them special, so it doesn't really matter.  I hear them fairly regularly hiking in the Smoky Mountains in spring.

This is actually a video that shows the bird singing...I think the song gets even nicer toward the end.  It's another example of what Dale mentioned...the bird can produce two sounds at once.
http://www.youtube.com/v/cK1gaTqBRRk&rel=0;autoplay=1

Faces only a mother could love...but I suppose that's equally true of the adults.

Awwww... don't you think this would sell Coke?

(photo from http://www.eaglevalleyraptorcenter.org/rehabilitation.asp)

OK, that one is almost cute, I'll admit.

Patti

OH! what a lovely hummingbird!!!

OK, let's got for maximal contrast, then:

Here are what seem to be two baby Turkey VULTURES.
I have no idea where I got this thing, but it makes me nervous.

Dale

Faces only a mother could love...but I suppose that's equally true of the adults.

[V]

And...some closeups of a bird you really don't ever want to see close up!   

Turkey Vultures

These lovely specimens were on the side of a road in a wildlife refuge we were traveling through.  We slowed to a crawl to give them a chance to fly off safely, but they just sat there calmly, so I snapped a photo.  Nearly broke the camera!

[V]

Violet-crowned Hummingbird...this delicate beauty was hanging out at some feeders in southeastern Arizona.

My collection of V birds is almost as pitiful as my U birds, which were non-existent...

This video of Snow Geese (and some Ross's Geese thrown in there as well) isn't nearly as good as the million-bird video Gayle posted in the ABCs, but it's mine...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qmbsit4t0w

I merged a couple of videos I shot at the Crane Festival in New Mexico last month (my first attempt at video editing).  There is a nightly ritual where the Snow Geese fly in from their feeding spots to an area of shallow water where they roost at night.  They have a habit of flying in when it's almost too dark to see, so the video quality isn't great (and YouTube's conversion/compression didn't help any), but the sheer numbers are fun!

In the second half you occasionally see a bigger bird among the Snow Geese; those are Sandhill Cranes, and the big gray birds in the water are also Sandhills (more video of them later, after more editing).

[R]

While looking for more info on the umbrella bird, I found this fellow...a Royal Flycatcher...



Photo by Daniel Martinez

From A.M. Costa Rica
"Bird-banders don’t forget their first royal flycatcher. In the hand, the bird waves its head around with the colorful crown fanned and gaping orange mouth in a mesmerizing “cobra� show.

Ei

If I had that thing in my hand I don't think I'd forget it either!

Patti

Blown away by the sheer numbers of cranes. I like the subtle, creaky sound, too.
How close were you? They aren't disturbed by people?
Very neat imagery to start my day with...thanks.

I am a terrible judge of distance, but we weren't terribly close...my camera has a 12x zoom, and I think it was at full zoom.  During the festival they strategically mow some of the cornfields up fairly close to the road to bring the cranes a little closer to the tourists, but they do leave a comfortable buffer.  The cranes won't feed unless the corn has been "bumped" down or mowed because they can't see predators in high corn. 

The folks that taught my six-hour crane workshop were speculating that the cranes on this particular migratory path aren't subjected to much hunting, and therefore might not be as skittish around people as other populations that are hunted along their migration routes.

I love their voices as well...in my crane workshop they taught us to recognize the slightly different voices of the males, females, and juveniles (who sound more high-pitched, squeaky, and almost have a hoarse quality...more gooselike than cranelike).  On the rare occasions that I catch the cranes migrating over Kentucky, it's always the chattering call that alerts me.  It carries fairly well, too, sometimes I hear them but can't see them at home.  Last weekend during my run in the park I heard their call distinctly but never saw them; perhaps they were too high (my crane experts said they sometimes fly as far as a mile high), or perhaps I had too many hills and trees blocking the view.

I think I've mentioned this in several threads, but I attended the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico this past November.  This is a link to a video I shot of a large group of Sandhills at one of the cornfields in the refuge.  Growing corn would be a trick in the New Mexican desert, except that the Rio Grande runs along the refuge boundary, managed both agriculture and a managed wetland possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKzPgW1Y_PM

A couple of minor spats break out, both on the right-hand side of the video; in spite of crowded winter conditions, they get upset if somebody violates their personal space.  The long pan toward the end of the video was to illustrate just how many cranes are in this single cornfield.

We're still seeing the cranes migrating over Kentucky...lovely to hear their voices, since they chatter the entire time they're flying!

[U]

Upland Sandpiper

This is the only one of the U birds I've actually seen...through a scope...at a great distance.  I would not claim to be able to identify it, but I was on a birding tour, and the alleged experts declared the bird in the scope's view to be an Upland Sandpiper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upland_Sandpiper
Photo also from Wikipedia

[U]

Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu (Uraeginthus bengalus)

Oh my...I don't have a single bird photo in my collection that starts with U, and when I look at the list of birds from the American Ornithologists Union, I can see why.  There are very close to none!  I've only ever seen one.

So...I also checked the latin names starting with U, and found this interesting bird, whose name sounds like something on a menu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-cheeked_Cordon-bleu
Photo (from Wikipedia)

why one earth should you wait?
in THIS game we have been showing very little restraint. GO for it!

I have only been waiting when it helps me balance the load between letters...for example, I had a lot of T birds and only a couple of V birds...so my turkey vultures are waiting for the V's!

Patti

Always gives me a tingle! Keep going, you beauties! Would love to see this! Patti in Kentucky, is this something you mentioned doing? (ie following the cranes?) Lucky old thing!

No, you probably remember me talking about going to a Sandhill Crane festival, which I did in November, and have way too many pictures I'm still sorting through.  I often think about trying to catch the Whoopers as they pass through Kentucky, since they're very weather-restricted, we never know in advance when that might happen, and usually don't have the leisure to take off spontaneously.

Patti

Tui have a dual voicebox - the secret to how they can get such human-sounding voice qualities (parrots only have one voicebox, thus the "parrot voice") ...they're doing two things at once, like Tuvan throat-singers do; a sort of harmonizing with yourself.

dale

Dale is right, but all birds have a dual voicebox; it's not unique to the Tui.  They just don't necessarily all choose to harmonize with themselves.  I'm saving up another spectacular example (my favorite birdsong) for when we get around to the Vs.  Here's a nice article about birds and singing:  http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/songs/index.html

[T]

I think this is the last bird photo I can dredge up that I can attempt to classify as a T bird...the Canyon Towhee.

The first photo is a Canyon Towhee behaving appropriately...picking up the dregs from someone's bird feeders in southeastern Arizona.

Here's the story behind the second photo: while on my birding tour in Arizona, taking a short bird walk, we left the windows open in the van since it was warm out and we were within sight of the van.  This lovely Canyon Towhee flew into the van but couldn't figure out how to get out (I'm tempted to say "bird brain", but we know that's an over-generalization  .  Our birding guide was Gary Rosenberg (his brother is a director of conversation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, so birding runs in the family), who carefully snagged the bird and gave us photo opportunities before he released it.