Most unusual sight

Looked out in the pasture and there was this big buzzard with a white chin strap. White chin strap on a buzzard? Looked again and I'm looking at a lone goose out there about 30 yards from the cows. I milled around them for a few minutes and it just stayed there standing erect and looking away and back at me several times. Honked a time or two. I walked it's way and got within 15 yards of it before it flew off.

Guess it got disoriented in the storm yesterday and just decided to light here. It flew off about a thousand feet to a neighbor's place and lit back down. Didn't appear to be injured.

Not sure it was a Canadian as it was much darker than I remember them being and it had a white band. Aren't Canadians gray with a black chin strap?

Ok, so what was it? A brandt is dark but doesn't have a chin strap does it?

Mark

The egret is a small stork and has a plume from a slick head out the back that has an upward half roll in gold. I have never seen them at water other than to drink. They like insects.

Seagulls are bad too by nature. Haven't personally had any problems with them and seldom does one visit. We get them up here sometimes from the gulf coast. Currently there is a new community landfill and there must be a thousand of them over there.

Mark

Mark

I remember reading about them getting over hunted when I was a kid. No body ever told me why they were over hunted. Feds went nuts protecting birds back in 1917 with their bird protection act. I understand they regularly add birds to it and just added the Cardinal. Now who goes around shooting Cardinals? Sunflower growers?

Buzzards and Blue Herons here are getting to be as much of a nuisance as wolves seem to be in the mountain states. Seems the folks out there have enough sense to back off the protectionism on the wolves. Would be nice if the same were true of the birds I mentioned. Getting to be so many of them here they are a real hazard to your agricultural operation, be it animals or fish.

It's calving season for me and I have to go out several times a day to see if any cows have calved and look for the buzzards, especially the white wing tipped ones.

But one critter I think is beautiful and doesn't bother a thing...the Coopers Hawk. They come down here for the winter and sometimes linger into the summer. Many times I will be hayin and either see the shadow from him being above me, or catch this flash out the corner of my eye where one swooped down and caught a field mouse/rat that I flushed.

Then there are the white (with gold highlights) Egrets that like grasshoppers and the like. They are real companions when you are hayin. I like to watch the way they work around the tractor, right next to you but always stay just out of the way and know when to move over. They also work with the cows grazing and sometimes get on the cows back and catch horseflies which I think is great.

Mark