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Found this beauty on the ground near a dumpster:



Far as I can tell it's a first year male blackbird, since it resembles an adult male but its bill is still dark and there's a visible eye ring that isn't yellow yet. Don't know what was up with it, it didn't get scared when I got near so I was able to take a very close photo, it just stood still and kept rotating its head. After waiting a while it flew off like normal.

"Fly on, sparrowhawk: past the goshawk's grasp, to the sky's embrace."

~Apologus de Accipiter

28-Oct-2019 09:11:10

Dug through some old photos, and found this:



Took it almost exactly a decade ago in Spain (which is also why the image quality isn't the best, it was taken with a shitty mobile phone), on a mountain path to a mountain that's locally known as "the seagull mountain", because of how many seagulls populate it. They're pretty tame too and people like to feed them there, so it's a cool trek to take every time I visit there.

Sadly haven't had the time to go there for a few years, but hoping to change that in the future!

"Fly on, sparrowhawk: past the goshawk's grasp, to the sky's embrace."

~Apologus de Accipiter

25-Jan-2020 12:03:11

Wilf said :
smart looking birds I'm not the best at gulls but I think they're Yellow Legged Gulls
I'm not a seagull expert either, but I'm pretty sure you're right: I looked up all the seagull species that live in Spain that I could find, and the yellow-legged gull was the only one that I found that lives in this part of the country. And it does seem to match the description as well.

"Fly on, sparrowhawk: past the goshawk's grasp, to the sky's embrace."

~Apologus de Accipiter

27-Jan-2020 15:20:54

Rooh said :
Used to see quite a lot of Buzzards where I was living a couple of years ago, managed to photograph one in flight.


Cool! I wish there were more birds of prey around where I live, but corvids dominate the area in that size group.

"Fly on, sparrowhawk: past the goshawk's grasp, to the sky's embrace."

~Apologus de Accipiter

29-Jan-2020 05:43:33

Two jackdaws on a power line, we have so many of them here, and they tend to hold social gatherings on those lines.

I'm also curious if there are others who have observed the behavior of corvids: magpies, hooded crows and jackdaws are the main ones around here, and even though they're very easy to tell apart from appearance anyway, they're quite distinctive in their patterns as well. Just as an example, a comparison of how they act when a human approaches:

-Magpies are the most fearful, they'll flee pretty much immediately when they discover that you're looking at them, from quite a long distance too. Doesn't matter if you act calmly or if you intentionally try to scare them away.

-Hooded crows are also quite cautious, but if you don't make any sudden moves and remain calm, they're surprisingly tolerant of you. They can allow you within a couple meters of them, but if you're close to them, they constantly pay attention to your movements.

-Jackdaws don't give a shit about you. You quite literally have to almost touch them for them to flee from you, and even then, they'll usually only flee 1-2 meters and forget about it.

Wilf said :
Aurumtail said :
Wilf said :
smart looking birds I'm not the best at gulls but I think they're Yellow Legged Gulls
I'm not a seagull expert either, but I'm pretty sure you're right: I looked up all the seagull species that live in Spain that I could find, and the yellow-legged gull was the only one that I found that lives in this part of the country. And it does seem to match the description as well.
used to be deemed a subspecies but is now classed as its own species
So are there (many) other gulls with yellow legs? Because if not, it should be pretty easy to distinguish them from other gulls, since others tend to have pinkish legs from what I've seen.

"Fly on, sparrowhawk: past the goshawk's grasp, to the sky's embrace."

~Apologus de Accipiter

07-Feb-2020 15:27:18

2 hooded crows foraging

To talk about corvid behavior some more, one thing they seem to have in common here is that they feel much safer when they're standing on grass as opposed to on a road or other terrain where humans walk often. Again, magpies are still pretty fearful even then, but the others, if they flee an approaching human on a road without flying off, they tend to run to a grassy area and stop, even if the road is right next to it. As if they learned it as a pattern that humans don't usually cross it.

"Fly on, sparrowhawk: past the goshawk's grasp, to the sky's embrace."

~Apologus de Accipiter

14-Feb-2020 16:37:40