Normally, it’s difficult to decide which was my favorite beastie of the day, but today’s was easy because it was life experience. I was watching a doe mule deer tip-toeing along behind a bobcat, and my imagination told me she was fixing to boot the bobcat into low Earth orbit, because maybe she had young nearby? but of course the boot never happened.Bob the cat was fixated on an adult Canada Goose walking across a grassy area.The goose soon appeared to be trapped in a corner of chain-link fence, too close to fly up and over, while the cat was in stealth mode sneaking toward the goose, who had, meanwhile, found a hole in the fence to get thru, but by this time the cat was moving quickly, found the same hole and lunged thru it faster than the speed of my brain trying to keep up, and grabbed the goose by the neck.The latter appeared zombified by these events, but was still alert, and the cat-with-goose immediately wandered into the understory of a mature riparian cottonwood stand and THAT was the end of the show…..
In a prior life I’d seen plenty of bobcats, but this was my first in Idaho since moving to the state eight yrs ago.Yes I got a couple of “year birds” today biking the Boise River Greenbelt (19 miles), but the cat & goose show was a first in my 70+ yrs !!=)
“Any day could have been a special day, but you had to get out there and see!”(Kenn Kaufman, Kingbird Highway, 1997)
Earlier this P.M. I found a male Blackpoll Warbler in the SE corner of Pioneer Cemetery. There is a big tree in the SE corner about 20ft. from a grave with the name INGLIS on it. That is the tree where I last had the bird. I found the bird about 1400 and had it for about 30mins. off and on. It was very windy, all birds were very active and there are many big trees in the adjoining neighborhood. Lots of coming and going. I did manage to get a few photos. I’ve not yet looked at them. Hopefully one or two will be close enough to be able to id the bird when I post to ebird here shortly.
Pioneer Cemetery is located on Warm Springs Ave. about a block off Broadway here in Boise near St. Luke’s Hosp..
There is no parking allowed within the cemetery. You’ll have to find a place on the street. I parked on N. Ave. C across from a little corner park that has a Celtic Cross sidewalk layout.There is a gate from the park to access the cemetery. Walk straight thru, keeping parallel to Warm Springs on your right. Just when you pass the Cecil Andrus gravesite you’ll see the tree where I last had the bird in front of you (see above).
I know ebird has a site marked as Morris Hill and Pioneer Cemetery. That is wrong. Pioneer is not Morris Hill. They are in totally different places in Boise. There is a separate ebird Hotspot marked for Pioneer Cemetery alone.
Continued Good Birding. RL
P.S. Mark Collie called me. He had a possible female Purple Finch at Morris Hill Cemetery about 1300. Seen in the trees near a brick maintenance bldg. along Emerald not far from where we had the sapsuckers this past winter.
I just spent a few minutes working in the garden and heard White-crowned Sparrows singing for the first time this year. I spread some finished compost around and noticed there were tons of earthworms in the pile, like red spaghetti. Ten minutes later there was a Hermit Thrush pulling them out and devouring them. Kind of cool how quickly the bird noticed the feast I uncovered.
Cliff
— Cliff and Lisa Weisse Island Park, Idaho @cliffweisse
Among the many advantages of doing yard work this time of year are close encounters of the Trochilidae kind…e.g., Missy’s Black-chinned hummingbird is like an attack dog whenever I’m near one of its feeders, and BTW he owns them all.Rufous to me are different, kind of shy of everything *except* hummers.I’ve seen BCHU do crazy things, like a female once perched right beside a kestrel, as if taunting it; another got caught in a spider web and literally had to be pried out of it; and I’ve had to peel a BCHU out of the grasp of a large mantis; Nancy Newfield (master bander in Loozianna) has referred to BCHU as cussing faster than any other bird in the West…😉
There are other advantages of spending hours out on the back forty ~ ~ like hearing every avian flyby that’s loud enough to be heard ~ ~ ~ Evening Grosbeaks, kingfishers, herons, ravens, yada yada, none of which are “common” in our hood, although a Screaming Piha (Swanson’s Hawk) has recently moved into the hood.
Going on 2 wks now, still have Evening Grosbeaks & Cassin’s Finches coming into feeder. Just a bit ago, had one each Evening, Black-headed, Cassin’s & House Finch on each side of feeder, at same time. Getting reports from friends in SW MT witnessing similar Spring irruption of Evening Grosbeaks.
Blue Jay still makes an early AM visit & again toward dusk. And have 1 ea male & female Black-chinned Hummingbirds coming into nectar. In fact, the female came in shortly after daybreak, when there was slush at top of nectar in the feeder. Fed for a couple minutes straight.
We live off a busy intersection and don’t see a large variety of birds at our feeders—House Finches, Song Sparrows, Goldfinches and the occasional Black-Capped Chickadee but late afternoon I had a Black-Headed Grosbeak and 2 Lazuli Buntings. Then, at 8 p.m. I had 6 Lazuli’s eating scraps off the deck. I think it’s a good year!!
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