Introduction

[Bird]

I'm a teenage girl diagnosed with an ASD, but the doctor said I'd have been diagnosed with Asperger's a couple months earlier, before DSM-V changed it. I think ASD is too broad, though, so I still use Asperger's. I like birds. A lot. Also, I really don't like people, but I am lonely and tired of being "the exception". I only like birds. That is all.

 

[Rocco]

Welcome aboard or should I say Welcome Bird? I like birds too, my kids and I have eight hens, four different types. Glad to have you join our friendly community. Best wishes.

 

[Bird]

What breeds are your hens?

 

[Rocco]

2 Rhode Island Red
2 Plymouth Rock
3 white
1 black with green tint.

 

[Judge]

I think ASD is too broad, though, so I still use Asperger's.

Good observation. And welcome to AC.

 

[StephF]

Welcome to AC. Live long & prosper.

 

[Bird]

2 Rhode Island Red
2 Plymouth Rock
3 white
1 black with green tint.

We have a Rhode Island Red, a Plymouth Rock, 3 Aracaunas, a Buff Orpington, a Black Australorpe, and a Brahma.

 

[ancusmitis]

I used to really like birds. For some reason I switched to something else. Nowadays I'm a wolf person. Welcome to the forum

 

[Joel I]

I'm also very keen on birds and other animals, also less keen on humans. I was a zookeeper for a while and was looking after a range of birds from finches, doves, parrots and water birds but my favourite species was the Southern Cassowary. I have always loved reptiles and bats as well.

 

[watersprite]

Hi Bird

Welcome to AC.

I really like your drawings.

 

[Marmot]

Welcome Bird,

If you haven't found it yet, you're going to want to check out our ever growing 'chicken' thread:

https://www.aspiescentral.com/threads/chickens.13856/

 

[Bird]

I'm also very keen on birds and other animals, also less keen on humans. I was a zookeeper for a while and was looking after a range of birds from finches, doves, parrots and water birds but my favourite species was the Southern Cassowary. I have always loved reptiles and bats as well.

Wow! That's awesome! I love Cassowaries so much, but the aviary I work at doesn't have a gun team, so we can't have anything classified as a dangerous animal. I'm currently pushing the lead keeper for Kori Bustards. What was the zoo you worked at? Next to birds I probably like reptiles best, and I am warming up to other animals my coworkers tell me about, that they have worked with.

 

[Bird]

This beauty was one of my favorite animals at the San Francisco Zoo.

 

[Cosmophylla]

Hi Bird, I saw you on the CHICKENS thread. I'm a bird lover, too. Welcome to AC.

I tend to prefer the smaller birds, things like wrens, thornbills, silvereyes, pardalotes. But I have a huge soft spot for Calyptorhynchus funereus, the yellow-tailed black cockatoo. We have a lot around this summer, which is always great to see, as they're listed as vulnerable. Our local council environment department has been trying to revegetate to increase food sources for them but if land developers keep cutting down old gums with nesting hollows the problem will remain. I love their sad, haunting calls (they are called "funereus"!) and the way they flap so impossibly slowly...they are huge and beautiful.

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Calyptorhynchus-funereus (There's a good audio track of one calling down the column on the right.)

 

[Bird]

Hi Bird, I saw you on the CHICKENS thread. I'm a bird lover, too. Welcome to AC.

I tend to prefer the smaller birds, things like wrens, thornbills, silvereyes, pardalotes. But I have a huge soft spot for Calyptorhynchus funereus, the yellow-tailed black cockatoo. We have a lot around this summer, which is always great to see, as they're listed as vulnerable. Our local council environment department has been trying to revegetate to increase food sources for them but if land developers keep cutting down old gums with nesting hollows the problem will remain. I love their sad, haunting calls (they are called "funereus"!) and the way they flap so impossibly slowly...they are huge and beautiful.

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Calyptorhynchus-funereus (There's a good audio track of one calling down the column on the right.)

Oh, how lovely! I go through stages of which birds I focus on. Psittacines are wonderful, and I really wish we had native species living in the U.S. But we do have some beautiful passerines. I love Corvids, especially. I want to go to Australia (is that where you live- with cockatoos, and thornbills, and pardalotes?), I would love to see the indigenous birds there.

 

[Andrew206]

Welcome to AC Bird!

 

[Cosmophylla]

Oh, how lovely! I go through stages of which birds I focus on. Psittacines are wonderful, and I really wish we had native species living in the U.S. But we do have some beautiful passerines. I love Corvids, especially. I want to go to Australia (is that where you live- with cockatoos, and thornbills, and pardalotes?), I would love to see the indigenous birds there.

It's funny you mention psittacines, because we have many species of psittacine where I live...they are easily the most plentiful birds in this region. My local species are:

Yellow-tailed black cockatoo
Sulphur-crested cockatoo
Little corella
Galah
Rainbow lorikeet
Musk lorikeet
Purple-crowned lorikeet
Adelaide rosella (and occasionally Eastern rosella)...grrr they eat all my plums and apricots!
Red-rumpled parrot
Occasional Elegant parrot, Blue-winged parrot and Budgerigar sightings

Phew! As you can imagine they make quite a noise! Especially those sulphur-cresteds... We're towards the end of the breeding season at last... with the fledgling galahs and cockies it can get pretty cacophonous at dawn and especially dusk. The fledgling galahs make an awful screeching/choking noise when they are being fed... Exactly like you would if you were trying to screech while your mother jammed her face into yours to spit food down your throat, haha. And the fledgling sulphur-cresteds sound like a deranged version of their parents...hard to describe but it's a bit like a screeched sneeze, if that is at all possible.

As for Corvids... The only species we have here where I live, as far as I know, is the Little Raven, Corvus mellori. Of course many people mistakenly think the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen, syn. Cracticus tibicen) is a corvid but it a member of the Artamidae family, with currawongs and butcherbirds and woodswallows... Common names are problematic, huh! I think it's understandable that people confuse Australian magpies with corvids because our "maggies" are pretty intelligent, too, and live in complex family groups.

The other plentiful bird group here is Meliphagidae, the nectivores/honeyeaters. There are many, many, many. Slightly less visible than the parrots, as they are smaller and a bit quieter.

The tiny finches, thornbills, etc., are the hardest to spot but I think they offer the greatest reward. I just wish I could photograph the ones that visit my garden...

ETA: oops sorry, yes, I live in South Australia, in a rural town in the Mount Lofty Ranges.

 

[Bird]

It's funny you mention psittacines, because we have many of psittacine where I live...they are easily the most plentiful birds in this region. My local species are:

Yellow-tailed black cockatoo
Sulphur-crested cockatoo
Little corella
Galah
Rainbow lorikeet
Musk lorikeet
Purple-crowned lorikeet
Adelaide rosella (and occasionally Eastern rosella)...grrr they eat all my plums and apricots!
Red-rumpled parrot
Occasional Elegant parrot, Blue-winged parrot and Budgerigar sightings

Phew! As you can imagine they make quite a noise! Especially those sulphur-cresteds... We're towards the end of the breeding season at last... with the fledgling galahs and cockies it can get pretty cacophonous at dawn and especially dusk. The fledgling galahs make an awful screeching/choking noise when they are being fed... Exactly like you would if you were trying to screech while your mother jammed her face into yours to spit food down your throat, haha. And the fledgling sulphur-cresteds sound like a deranged version of their parents...hard to describe but it's a bit like a screeched sneeze, if that is at all possible.

As for Corvids... The only species we have here where I live, as far as I know, is the Little Raven, Corvus mellori. Of course many people mistakenly think the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen, syn. Cracticus tibicen) is a corvid but it a member of the Artamidae family, with currawongs and butcherbirds and woodswallows... Common names are problematic, huh! I think it's understandable that people confuse Australian magpies with corvids because our "maggies" are pretty intelligent, too, and live in complex family groups.

The other plentiful bird group here is Meliphagidae, the nectivores/honeyeaters. There are many, many, many. Slightly less visible than the parrots, as they are smaller and a bit quieter.

The tiny finches, thornbills, etc., are the hardest to spot but I think they offer the greatest reward. I just wish I could photograph the ones that visit my garden...

ETA: oops sorry, yes, I live in South Australia, in a rural town in the Mount Lofty Ranges.

I guess we have the Corvids as a counterpart to Psittacines! We have Black-billed Magpies, American Crows, some Common Ravens, Scrub Jays, and Steller's Jays. They are not as bright, but they have lovely, subtle iridescence. They are also loud, pesky, and intelligent. I often hear the muffled screeching of fledgling magpies in the spring, , so I can kind of imagine the galahs. I admit the racket can get old, but I have to admit, both families are some of my favorites (that's a joke- the only birds that aren't some of my favorites are the mallard ducks that flock to our aviary every winter; and that's only when they harass our ducks.). Anyway, I'm jealous of your native species. I love my wild Rocky Mountain birds, but I don't see enough foreign species.
The Australian Magpie is a tricksy species. I confess I am smug about this one, because I learnt when I was 8 about how it differs from traditional magpies. It is nice to talk with someone else who knows as well; even my family still needs reminders. But even looking at it, despite the superficial resemblance, they have marked differences. The coloration is similar, but the beak structure is wrong for a corvid.
Honeyeaters are another species I wish we had. We have hummingbirds, but I think that is as close as it gets- and that is an entirely different order! Tell me more about your native finches, though. We have quite a few (Most commonly House finches and Goldfinches). And the thornbills! Small birds have a unique charm. My native small passerines include chickadees, juncos, sparrows, kinglets, the finches, an occasional creeper or nuthatch, and a variety of warblers.

 

[Cosmophylla]

We have hummingbirds, but I think that is as close as it gets- and that is an entirely different order! Tell me more about your native finches, though. We have quite a few (Most commonly House finches and Goldfinches). And the thornbills! Small birds have a unique charm. My native small passerines include chickadees, juncos, sparrows, kinglets, the finches, an occasional creeper or nuthatch, and a variety of warblers.

I've never seen a hummingbird, so that's on my list. Our spinebills are similar in that they are fairly small, have the long curved beak, can hover (albeit only a little) and love tubular flowers, but they are nowhere near hummingbirds for size or speed. I love the way they hang upside down to feed on my fuchsia plants. My favourite honeyeaters are the spinebills (my local species Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris) and white-naped honeyeaters (Melithreptus lunatus). I just looooove the velvety green.

The only finches I've seen around here are introduced house sparrows Passer domesticus (Is that what you mean by house finch?), introduced European goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) and indigenous Red-browed firetails/finches (Neochmia temporalis). I tend to see the firetails early on Autumn mornings, feeding on grass seeds on the ground, or hopping through the picket fence around my vegie garden.

As for thornbills, we have a family of Striated thornbills (Acanthiza lineata) that comes to our garden for its bedtime bath. We also sometimes see Yellow thornbills (A. nana) in the back garden, and Yellow-rumped thornbills (A. chrysorrhoa) at the golf course about 400m away. I've also seen a Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris) a couple of times in the back garden... The smallest of our birds, and it looks like a cross between a thornbills and a finch. Lacks the fish tail of the finch in flight, but its beak is too thick for a thornbill.

 

[Marmot]

I've never seen a hummingbird, so that's on my list.
.

I’m not saying that hummingbirds are stupid or anything, but in the past year I have had two fly into my house and not figure out how to get back out, and another (it might be a finch, not a hummingbird) who thought it was Santa Clause and decided to come down my chimney and start flopping around in the soot & ashes of my wood stove till I could capture it in a clear plastic bag and set it free.

When they get in the house there is no way to capture them alive while they’re slamming around & banging into the windows so I literally have to follow them around till they collapse from exhaustion, scoop them up & then give them a tray of sugar water (out on the deck of course) till they recuperate enough to fly off. This one in the latter picture actually looked at me and thanked me for a few seconds after recuperating, but before taking off....