Common Nature

A quartet of sparrows at the cake feeder earlier today. The two hens are about to go at it over who perches on top. For whatever reason, it is extremely important to be the bird that perches on the top. When the dirty looks turned into open squabbling, the two cocks fled, leaving the hens to fight it out. During the autumn, winter, and early spring, the hens are the more dominant sex. As soon as the issue was decided, everyone calmed down and got along again. Just then I either moved too fast, or made a noise, and they all fled into the bushes, as sparrows do. All except for the one who'd just won the fight. She sat defiantly in place, eating. Either she didn't want to abandon her prize, or else she was a big enough badass that she just wasn't scared of some human.

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Sparrow babies. I have a four box Sparrow colony on the back of the house. These are the three babies in my D box today. Their eyes are open, and their feathers are starting to emerge from the quills. Alert little birds now, where only a few days ago they were naked and pink, and slept all the time. In a few more days they'll start exercising their wings, and wanting to look out the entrance hole to see what's outside.

This afternoon at the cake feeder:



A male starling (you can tell by the corners of the beak - boys are blue, girls are pink - seriously) attacks the cake feeder. I think he's pretty young, firstly because he's still got a lot of brown in his plumage (mature males have a beautiful 'oil on water' sheen to them), but also because he's clearly not had a lot of experience perching on a feeder as he eats. He was flapping and making the feeder bang around the entire time, until he finally managed to get some cake.
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