Best For Birds

I have found what I think is an owl pellet, but just want to be sure that it didn't come out the other end of a different animal!

Yes, Hawks, eagles, and falcons all do! Since birds cannot pick and choose whether they eat bone and feathers/fur or not, they have to be able to cast these items back out. They usually rip their food apart with their beak, holding it with their foot. This leaves the fur and bone inside. They swollow large chunks whole, and let their digestive system work it out…
If it looks like an owl pellet, it's not a defecate. It could be a pellet from another animal, but came from the mouth, not the "other end"

We have noticed some unusual birds at our feeders. They look like cardinals, except they are all brown. A few have the orange beaks like a cardinal, but most have brown beaks. But as I said, they are shaped exactly like a cardinal, with top crest and all. We live in southern Ohio, and I cannot seem to find a bird that fits this description for this area, unless they are just mutant cardinals. Anyone have any ideas?
I know female cardinals are less red than males, but they generally still have some red to them. These are COMPLETELY brown, and are too old to be juveniles as well.

Sounds like the female cardinal, she is brown, looks just like the red one, which is the male. Buy a field guide to birds.

Is there a website I can visit where I can see pictures of North American Birds and hear their songs?
I would like to be able to identify them by sound.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/

Just look up the name of the bird from the list. Most of them have sound clips of thier songs.

a robin bird keeps smacking its self to my window. it keeps coming and going.

The Robin bird is fighting their reflection in your window, thinking that the reflection is a rival bird.

Its not a good idea. Its called inbreeding. There may be defects, but more likely there will be health issues that are initially invisible.I strongly recommend against it.

I really want a pet bird, and I'm willing to take care of it and give it plenty of attention. I was hoping for a kind of bird you could teach how to talk, or sing. Could you suggest some types of birds that'd be good? Do you enjoy having a bird? How much does it cost? Can you hold and maybe even… pet a bird?

budgie
love bird
cockatiel
- they are the smallish less expensive ones - you can teach them to talk and they are really intelligent and can learn to enjoy human interaction

or if you want to go for the real expensive big ones try a macaw, african grey parrot or cockatoo

When Nature provides you with just what you are looking for -
this is ’synchronicity’ in action. I was completing an
illustrated version of one of my ebooks ‘The Adventure of
Arthur’ and was short of some good pictures of a Robin - who is
a sort of ‘guide’ in this story - called ‘Follow the Robin’. I
had used a scanned Christmas card ‘at a pinch’ for this image
and - well it just sort of spoiled the ebook. With this in the
back of my mind I set off on a walk with my camera.

I went to a place downriver where there are no buildings, no
sound of cars, no people. It’s a place ‘out of time’ where you
can shift between centuries and just ‘be there’ at any time as
it has remained essentially unchanged for hundreds of years.
Ever since I went to view the Cornish solar eclipse of 2000
there it had become one of my ’special places’. The river Fowey
forks together just here and then starts to open out into St.
Winnow Pool and the valley bottom is secluded by mature mixed
woodland on every side.

After taking a couple of photos of ‘light sparkling on the
River’, I shut my eyes to take in the sounds - wind in trees,
distant sounds of farm animals, the subtle and playful noises of
water. After a few moments I heard a fluttering behind me - and
opened my eyes to see a Robin perched on top of my camera bag,
not even 18 inches away. It stared at me, head cocked, and flew
off to a nearby tree to pour out its fantastic song just above
my head. I saw another one, slightly smaller, hopping about
nearby, shyer than her mate.

I took the camera from the bag and hung it round my neck. The
tiny bird was just within zoom reach and I got a couple of shots
of it singing. ‘How lucky am I’? I thought. Just the pics I
need. After a few minutes the bird stopped its beautiful song,
and flew off to another tree nearby where it started ‘clucking’.
A sort of ‘tick tick’ noise like a fisherman’s reel. Robins make
this kind of noise sometimes too. I wished I had some seeds or
breadcrumbs to tempt it closer, but I had taken no food with me.
I clucked back to my best ability, matching its noises as best I
could without a Robin beak or larynx (do they have larynxes ? )

When it clucked once, I did. Then twice. Then three times,
altering the intervals between clucks like the bird. It hopped
nearer and nearer. Looking at me from various positions. And
then it flew over and actually stood on my knee. Very carefully
I lifted the camera and turned it on, hoping the little
electronic noises wouldn’t scare it. It stayed and I got a
wonderful close-up.

But then it started ‘posing’. You’re not going to believe this
but it moved its head around like a top model - giving me angles
from the left and right and front, staying right there on my
knee for what seemed like a few minutes. I know it sounds like
an ‘anthromorphic projection’ (where humans invest animals and
nature with their own ‘motivations’, which really annoys me
sometimes) - but that is really what it seemed like. It’s like
this Robin really wanted to be published - and now it is !

Even days later I feel so rewarded with this intimate connection
with a wild animal - and I just had to share it with you.

So I have to go back there with a gift for this friendly Robin
and his mate. I wondered what do Robins eat and stuff. What
would make a good gift for this friendly creature, perhaps the
best-loved of all birds with its sweet but slightly melancholy
song ?

I dug out ‘British Nesting Birds’, my 1910 edition by W.
Percival Westell (author of ‘Nature Stalking for Boys’). This
bird has loads of common names: Bobbie, Bob, Bobrobin,
Brow-Rhuddyn (Welsh), Robinet, Ruddock and Tommi-Liden amongst
them. WP Westell tells me they eat worms, earwigs, butterflies,
larvae, spiders, daddy-long-legs and will take scraps in Winter.
They make their nests from moss, dead leaves, stalks of plants
with a neat lining of roots, hair, or wool.

There’s my answer. Some soft, washed wool for the Robin to line
its nest for the coming brood - but not red !

Later on I returned.

I could hear the Robin some way off in the trees and couldn’t
seem to attract it by ‘clucking’. So I tried to contact the bird
with a technique I had read about where you push a picture into
an animal’s mind through its third eye. I sent it pictures of a
little nest with five eggs, all cosy with the newly cut bits of
woolly jumper I had brought with me.

Within a minute I heard the whir of wings and the Robin was
standing on the end of the bench where I sat. I slowly raised my
arm and dropped one of the wool pieces down near the bird. There
was no communication as such but I gained a strong impression I
was being scolded. Here follows a rough translation of what I
believe the bird replied:

“Take yer stupid peices of wool home with you, there the last
thing we need round here. The moss here is fantastic, it is
soft, there’s loads of it and has much better water draining
qualities than them soggy bits of cloth. If I use those the damp
will rot my chicks in the nest. Fat lot you know. If you really
want to make friends go and get me some fat juicy worms and
bring them here.”

I checked the moss. Because of the clean air here, there is
loads of moss and lichen for lining nests. It was certainly much
less likely to get damp than my wool. Suitably chastised I
returned home. I saw several Robins on the way home, they kind
of made themselves conspicuous by landing in a tree nearby and
starting to sing as I walked by - or was it the same Robin ?

But later, on a mornings gardening with my son, I persuaded him
to pick up some worms and save them for an expedition to see the
tame Robin that afternoon. The aim was to get the Robin to take
a worm from his hand, which in his words would be ‘cool’.

We sat there for about 45 minutes, making Robin clucking noises
but I could see his attention was wearing thin. He listened to
the bird song and we identified a pheasant, several other Robin
songs from over the river, the exciting cry of a hunting buzzard
and some other bird I couldn’t identify that makes a noise like
‘Michupichu - Michupichu’ ! We decided to ’set the worms free’
and headed into the copse behind us to find non-salty soil above
the highest tide mark and placed them down where they could
wriggle back into the earth.

It was then I saw the Robin, high up in one of the trees. Three
Robins. I sat down next to the worms and stage whispered to
Wills “Walk over here and sit down quietly”. But it was too
late. Quick as a flash of bright red the Robin swooped in and
bit off one end of one of the worms, fluttering back up to a
nearby tree. Wills sat down next to me and we picked up a worm
each and held it out. The Robin fluttered around from bush to
bush, keeping a beady eye on us at all times. Then it flew from
a bush, landed on my son’s head for a moment, and flew off to
another one.

It came closer as we stretched out our worms for the taking but
just then two large dogs ran through the copse, breaking the
moment. It was Mel with her daughters, Emily and Hazel, out
walking the dogs. Wills was glad to find some people his own age
to play with and we went back to Mel’s house for a cup of tea.

Simon Mitchell
http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/the-song-of-robin-redbreast-erithacus-rubecula-1282.html

The North American racer snakes is commonly known as northern black racer. The scientific name of these snakes is coluber constrictor constrictor. Coluber is the Latin word and the meaning of the same is snake. Constrictor is again the Latin name which means together, or with. The other vernacular names of these snakes are plenty and are listed as follows. They are black runner, black racer, chicken snake, blue racer, hoop snake, green snake, black slick snake, horse racer, black true snake, white throat racer, and cow sucker.

The average length of the snake racer reptile will be from 35 inch to 60 inch. These snakes are relatively larger snakes and are black in color. The belly will be grey in color and the chin of the snake will be white. The body of the snake will be round and the scales that are found on the body will be smooth. The males and the females look alike and are very difficult to differentiate them by the appearance. The young ones will be dark grey patter against the brown body. The color of the Venter will be cream and can have black dots that are irregular. Brown or black dots that are small can be seen on the lateral to the dorsum.

Racer American snakes are often confused with rat snake. But the rat snake body will have bread loaf shape in cross section. The rat snakes have keeled scales which is absent in such snake that is found in most states in North America. The juvenile rat snakes will have pattern that resembles the checker board and eye jaw stripe on the belly portion. The juvenile rat snakes will have blotches that are irregular with posterior and anterior projections. Hog nosed snake black phase is also confused with the racer snake. But these hog nosed snakes are stocky and short when compared to black racer snakes.

The distribution of such wildly popular American snake are found in the Virginia and west part of the Blue Ridge Mountain. Other than southwest part of America, these snakes can be found in all other northern parts of America and south Canada. Relating food, these North American racer snakes are carnivores. These snake feed on frogs, skinks, chipmunks, small birds, squirrels, butterfly, larva of moth, mice etc. the juveniles feed on invertebrates while the adults feed on reptiles and rodents. North American racer snakes hold the prey tightly in the body loops and swallow them alive.

Joaquin Reveron
http://www.articlesbase.com/pets-articles/an-american-almost-not-seen-rare-snake-info-72655.html

Garden birds are not just about looking nice while hanging from your bird feeders, they actually provide a vital role. If you are a keen gardener then you may already have birdfeeders in your garden to attract your local birdlife, but if you don’t here are some good reasons why you should.

If you are a keen rose grower or maybe enjoy the produce of your vegetable plot then you will know how difficult it is to keep away the pests. You can be sure that whatever is your favourite plant in your garden there is a bug or beetle around making life difficult.

You could use pesticides and chemicals to rid you of these pests but I think we are all aware of the ecological effects of chemicals in our environment and especially if you are growing veg or fruit you will want them as natural as possible to get that home grown taste.

By now you will have probably worked out where I’m going with this, it’s easy to take garden birds for granted but if you can make your garden a comfortable place for them to be, to feed, to rest and to play the will pay you back by eating every bug and beetle they can find. Now you may think that if you use bird feeders they will ignore the natural food and keep to the nuts and suet, but you would be surprised, once you have created a haven for your garden birds they will be spending a good deal of time there and that includes hopping about and doing bird type things, which includes hunting for bugs amongst the beds and bushes, it’s their natural behaviour and so the more birds you have in your garden the more effective they will be at keeping the pests down.

Other Useful Jobs
It’s not just pest control that the local bird life are skilled at, there are plenty other jobs they will do for you while they are in your garden. I’m sure at some stage you will have seen a finch hopping about on your lawn pecking at the ground a rooting for worms, a big garden worm is a tasty meal for birds and they are always keen to find them, well, once again they are helping us out, by pecking and rooting around on the grass they are aerating the top surface of the grass which will aid growth of your lawn and help it remain healthy and green.

The next job your garden birds will help you with is re-seeding of plants, this may not be an exact science but if you are a fan of a natural garden then they will be a useful and completely natural way of distributing the seeds of your favourite plants around the garden at just the right time of year, if can be a great surprise when you see where it turns up next year. This works when the birds are eating the berries and seed pods of the plants in your garden. They aren’t the most careful of eaters and will clean themselves after a meal, when they do this they wipe their beak on a branch allowing the left over seeds to fall back to the earth and re-seed.

The other natural method of seed distribution happens when they finally go to the toilet, not all the seeds will have been digested and the bird deposit will provide perfect nutrients to get the seeds off to a great start in the soil where they fell.

So you get all these jobs done for you by simply inviting your local neighbourhood birds into your garden.

So get those bird feeders up, make or buy a bird bath for them and help them to help you this year in your garden, they will thank you for it!

Andrew Lawrence
http://www.articlesbase.com/gardening-articles/why-you-need-birds-in-your-garden-83890.html