Whoa!
Last Friday started as a gray day, regardless of no rain the humidity was way up and temperatures in the high 70s. I had all the feeders refilled and got my camera ready, since I love gray days for photography, shadowless and sharp. For a while didn’t see any birds beside the Hummers, then suddenly all hell broke loose! Seemed like somebody must have sent a twitter 🙂 because a mob of birds came to eat, no less than 20 N. Cardinals both genders, Mourning Doves, Song Sparrows and was stunned by the appearance of C. Chickadees that I thought were gone. Most birds are sporting their non-breeding color plumage at this time in the season. I had a great time shooting pictures and it definitely made my day! Over a year ago I had a Canon camera Rebel T1i that it was dropped from my tripod and got damage, cracked the body in one corner on the bottom and went out of whack in the electronic functions. It was unusable. I bought a Canon 60D and totally forgot about the T1i. A week ago I sent it to Canon Repair Service and they preferred to replace it for one T1i new for $200.-. I’m so elated about it! I tried Camera Repairs and just charged $ 99.00 for looking at it and others simply refused to take the job. Now I have a new camera again! So now my equipment is: Canon 5D, Canon 60D, Canon T1i, Canon 20D, Canon SX30, Canon G10.
Click on image to see enlargements gallery
-
- Ruby-throated Hummingbird
-
- Mourning Doves
-
- Northern Cardinal (F)
-
- Northern Cardinal (M)
-
- Ruby-throated Hummingbird
-
- Northern Cardinal (F)
-
- Northern Cardinal (F) & (M)
Text and photographs © H.J. Ruiz – Avian 101
H.J. Ruiz - Avian101 
Lately I’ve had a very aggressive mourning dove take over my largest feeder, which is a shallow dish. It dominates, kicking the other doves and the house finches off. It was even pecking at a couple of the doves yesterday and I now have mouthsful of feathers all over the ground underneat the feeder. Today that little sucker took over the feeder for a solid four hours. I even went outside to take pictures and all it did was stand up and look at me. For a couple of hours I thought it might actually be dead because it was lying in the feeder. Strangest thing.
This behavior is typical of Mourning Doves, they look very innocent and gentle but they can be nasty to other doves or other small species. They are voracious eaters. What they eat doesn’t go directly to their stomach, the seeds are first kept on a pouch and then gradually pass it to their digestive system where is crunched and digested. So they can empty a dish of seeds in one sitting!
These birds are the preferred meal of Hawks! Sadly to say!