I love Fall. It’s my favorite season of all the 4 although I don’t get to experience it as most countries do. I live on an island, so Fall for me is when trees start shedding, and leaves start changing in March/April.
I was not inspired to write any new material this Fall, but back in 2017, I wrote a short story and poem for Falltober. Here’s an update of that poem:
Recently, I sat down to sketch a Fall setting, but I ended up on Canva with a blank template and I ended up with this…
…that is now my header. I just wanted to pay tribute to Fall with this little post.
Happy Fall everyone!
**GIFs/Images that don’t belong to LPM are via Google Search (Right-click for original source)
Good night, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Birdies! For the last few months, I’ve been featuring birds of every color and sizes for the A to Z Bird Challenge. Although it’s now completed, I went back to pour over the birds that didn’t quite make the cut, so this is sort of a tribute to them… and one or two that were already featured.
And the winners are:
🐦 Best Hair-do: The Gloster Canary & The Crested Duck
Mr. Gloster has a wicked bowl haircut, while the crested ducks look like judges of the lake.
🐦 Most Graceful: The Swan
All I can say is… beat that!
🐦 Most Elegant: The Flamingo
Co-host: Is that the winning dance?
I don’t know what it’s doing, Bob, but this moonwalk is dizzying!
🐦 Most Joyful While Working: The Hummingbird
What can I say? I love watching these babies work!
🐦 Just the Sweetest: The Strawberry Finch
It looks like it was dipped in added sugar. It’s like an overly sweet, ripe strawberry!
🐦 Most Photogenic Owl: The Burrowing Owl
Name a fiercer model, I’m waiting.
🐦 The Cutest Owl: The Barn Owl
Co-host: And it’s fabulous, too!
🐦 Most Talented & Best Prankster: The Lyre
This bird is unbelievable! So incredible, that we have to go to video, Jose!
Co-host: It’s Bob.
That’s what I said! (Cringes as Bob gives a death stare) Anyways, this bird is AMAZING at mimicry! It can mimic anything from car alarms to chainsaws. Let’s go to video with Attenborough!
🐦 Best Dancer: The Western Parotia
Moves so sick, you should call the cops! Here’s the lost audition tape of this terrific dancer.
🐦 Top Model: The Secretary Bird
Come on, Legs for Years!
🐦 Most Excellent Shade of Blue: The Blue Crowned Pigeon & The Grandala
All beautiful things come in packages of exotic blue shades!
🐦 The Fluffiest: The Long Tailed Tit
What a cute fluff ball!
🐦 Best Camouflage: The Large Frogmouth
If this bird were to be still in a pile of leaves… it’ll look like a pile of leaves. And the baby is cute!
🐦 Most Fancy: The Frillback Pigeon & The Crested Guineafowl
What beauties! It looks like someone actually sprinkled chocolate shavings on the pigeon and the guineafowl looks like a rockstar… if Little Richard and Prince were birds!
🐦 Most Extraordinary: The Harpy Eagle
Co-host: ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ called; they want their costume back!
Haha! Good one, Jose!
Co-host: It’s Bob for the last time.
That’s what the parakeet said.
Co-host: I’m out. You can finish host the Birdies with your lame jokes! (Puts mic down and exits)
Peckish much? Let’s wrap this up!
🐦 Bird I Wouldn’t Mess With: The Dracula Parrot
Yikes! A goth among birds. If Marcus was a bird…
🐦 The Sweetest Sounding Name: Tilhi
This bird is beautiful. Period.
🐦 The Most Annoying: Woody Woodpecker!
And that is all the time we have! Thank you for joining us. Good night from somewhere in a bird’s natural habitat!
Images & Video Reference: Pinterest; Google Search; YouTube
We’ve finally come to the end of this amazing challenge! I’ve learned so much about a variety of birds including ones I’ve met for the first time. While I do look forward in doing another A-Z challenge, this one made me want to add more nature to the blog, so I’ll be looking at ways in how I incorporate do that. For now, here’s the Zebra Flinch!
Image: Look at this beauty!
🐦 Zebra flinches tend to live in large flocks; they’re natives to Australia, East Timor, and Indonesia. They’ve been introduced to Puerto Rico and Costa Rica.
🐦 Males tend to woo the females with their courtship dance and original song. Females do not sing.
Image: Just a couple of love birds
🐦 Nests are usually built of grasses and lined with feathers or even wool.
🐦 The expected lifespan of zebra flinches in the wild is 2 to 3 years.
Image: Cuddly
🐦 These birds are often kept as pets, but love matters to a zebra flinch, and when they choose their own mates, they’re better parents. When we play matchmakers for them, we tend to disturb their nature for they’re monogamous and tend to mate for life. Also, they don’t liked to be handled by humans.
Via Tim Siggs, here’s a short video of the zebra flinches in the wild:
This bird is so beautiful! It’s like a small kiskadee. I’m going to miss this challenge when it finally comes to an end, but I have a few ideas in store for another one. Enjoy this beauty!
Image: “Singing my song, all the day long!”
🐦 Where the adult males are bright yellow with a sharp black mask on the face, the females lack the black mask; they’re plain and olive brown.
🐦 Yellowthroats live in open areas (marshes being their hot spot). During migration, they might be found in forests or backyards.
Image: “I’m ready for my close-up!”
A female Yellowthroat
🐦 Yellowthroats are nonconformists and there are 13 species of them.
🐦 These small songbirds are also known as a New World Warbler.
Image: “Look, Ma, I’m a butter ball.”
🐦 Despite a decline in some areas due to loss of habitat, they’re still pretty common.
Via Clive Bramham, listen to the sweet cheerful melody of the male Yellowthroat:
We’re almost to the end of this wonderful challenge, and I was really happy to get a bird starting with the letter X. I must say, what I love about nature, is that it doesn’t need a soundtrack for the singing of birds are sufficient. Even their wings is music itself.
Image: So pretty!
🐦 The Xantus’s Hummingbird was named after John Xantus de Vesey, a Hungarian zoologist.
🐦 These birds are native to the southern Baja Peninsula of Mexico (Baja California) and Jacques Cousteau Island aka Cerralvo Island (uninhabited island located off the coast of the Cerralvo Channel in Baja California Sur). They have also been documented in southern California and British Columbia.
Image: Xantus’s male
🐦 The Xantus’s Hummingbird measures 3 – 3.5 inches (8 – 9 cm) in length – including bill and tail.
🐦 These birds feed on nectar taken from a variety of brightly colored, scented small flowers of trees, herbs, shrubs, and epiphytes. They favor flowers with the highest sugar content.
Image: What a beaut!
🐦 A nesting female can capture up to 2,000 insects a day.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a YT video about the Xantus’s Hummingbird, but I still wanted to feature a video, so via ZoneA, here’s a video of 10 beautiful hummingbirds.
I love Woodpeckers! They bring such a joy to my face whenever I hear their tree-pecking that I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and venture outside to look at them for a while.
Image: The ever elegant Pileated Woodpecker.
I see a lot of this beauty in my backyard.
🐦 There are more than 180 species of woodpeckers worldwide and although they can be found in jungles, forests, ad deserts around the world, they’re not native to Madagascar, New Zealand, Australia, or Antarctica.
🐦Woodpeckers do not have vocal songs, so they drum on objects that echo loudly to communicate with each other such as logs, rain gutters, trash cans, hollow trees etc. They also drum to attract mates.
Image: The Great Spotted Woodpecker.
Isn’t it a thing of beauty?
🐦 Woodpeckers can peck up to 20 times per second, or a total of 8,000-12,000 pecks per day. And no, they don’t get headaches from pecking. 😄
🐦 Most Woodpeckers have zygodactyl feet, which means they have two toes facing the front and two toes facing the back to help them strongly grip trees in a vertical position.
Image: The classy Ladder-Backed Woodpecker
🐦 And last, but not least, a fun fact: Woody Woodpecker is the most famous fictional Woodpecker. However, he is not a distinct Woodpecker species. His size and characteristic laugh is closer to the Pileated Woodpecker, but his red head, blue back and wings are inspired from the Red-headed Woodpecker.
Although iconic, Woody can give Bugs Bunny a run for most obnoxious cartoon ever created!
The Pileated Woodpecker is the world’s most fearless Woodpecker and the largest Woodpecker alive in North America. Via Martyn Stewart, here’s a great video of said Woodpecker in its natural habitat.
For a minute, I forgot about this challenge, and since it’s almost to the end, I decide to push to finish it. This post might be the shortest in the series I’ve done so far.
The blue on this bird is STUNNING!!
Image: Strut
🐦 This bird is the largest and most colorful extant species of guineafowl.
🐦 The Vulturine Guineafowl got its name from its appearance.
Image: The bald and the beautiful!
🐦 Because of its bare skin of head and neck, this guineafowl can sometimes be confused for a vulture despite its beautiful plumage. I for one mistook it for one when I first came across the photo.
🐦 Although the female is smaller than the male, both sexes are similar in plumage.
Image: Elegantly poised
🐦 The female lays between 13 and 15 eggs, but two females can lay in the same nest.
Want to hear some sweet singing from the Vulturine Guineafowl? Watch this video via groenelantaarn and enjoy:
I just discovered this cool long-wattled bird and I just had to feature it! Its unusual just as its name.
Image: The long-wattled Umbrella beauty!
🐦 The Umbrellabirds are found in rainforests of Central and South America.
🐦 These birds are notable for their unique, umbrella-like crest and for the pendant suspended from the throat, which is an inflatable wattle.
Image: The Bare-Necked Umbrellabird
🐦 They spend most of their lives in the canopies of tall trees.
🐦 Although the Umbrellabird can fly short distances, their large size makes flying difficult and it tends to hop from branch to branch.
Image: The Amazonian Umbrellabird
🐦 There are 3 species of Umbrellabirds: the Long-Wattled, the Amazonian, and the Bare-Necked.
Via Adela Espinosa, see the long-wattled umbrellabird in its natural habitat. At 44 seconds and again at 1:19, listen carefully, and you’ll hear the sound it makes. It’s like a ship horn or the sound the tripods make in War of the Worlds! 💙
Toucans are beautiful creatures with oversize and sometimes colorful bills that you can’t miss ’em. I actually had another bird in mind for this post – the Trinidad Piping Guan – but after my sister sent me some Toucan pictures, well, it seemed like fate, for they’re iconic.
Image: Nature at its finest!
🐦 Also called the Toco Toucan, it is the largest toucan of all the species, measuring in at a whopping 25 inches (63.5 cm) with an 8-inch (19 cm) neon orange beak. When compared to the size of its body, the Toucans as the largest bill of all the world’s birds.
🐦 The Toucans’ colorful extravaganza is designed to camouflage for the rainforest that allows them to hide amongst the plants. They can be found in the Caribbean, Southern Mexico, and northern parts of South America.
Image: Who’s a prewty birdie? The keel-billed Toucan
🐦 Toucans take shelter in hollowed out trees usually created by woodpeckers. By the way, woodpeckers are closely related to toucans.
🐦 Toucans manage their body temperature by adjusting the blood flow to their beak as more blood means more heat release. Due to this, the creatures sleep on their beak to conserve heat. I learn that their beaks are actually soft, so they’re unable to use it for digging or fighting; the inside of the beak is made of bone, whereas the outer beak is made of keratin.
Image: The Chestnut-eared Araçari belongs to the Toucan family.
🐦 Belize has the rainbow-billed (also called keel-billed) toucan as its national bird.
Here’s the thing, I see many people have pet toucans, but I prefer to see them in their natural habitat where they can be free to fly, have a family, and do toucan things. They’re not puppies or kittens and I dislike seeing them being treated as such. Via Birdfun, listen to the sounds of a few Costa Rican birds including the yellow-throated and keel-billed toucans!
Talk about legs! These beauties have legs for months and eyelashes (actually modified feathers) that models would spill tears over, but look pass the exterior beauty, and you’ll discover a killer queen that enjoys stomping venomous snakes to death.
Image: Legs, legs, legs!
🐦 Secretary Birds can be found throughout Africa, except Sierra Leone and Liberia. They’re also called ‘Archers of Snakes’ although their diet also consists of arthropods, rodents, insect pests, and small mammals.
🐦 For all the snake stomping that they so, Secretary birds are generally silent.
Image: Models could never!
🐦 This bird of prey is said to have gotten its name from its crest of long feathers that look like the quill pens 19th-century office workers used to tuck behind their ears. I can’t see it, though.
🐦 They’re not social birds, and they pair for life.
Image: Not a hair feather out of place.
🐦 These birds like stamping so much, that they tend to stamp on grass tussocks to scare up small mammals, birds, lizards, and grasshoppers.
🎶 Could you be… the most beautiful bird in the world…🎶
This bird is more than a secretary. They should’ve been called Executive Assistant birds. They’re like eagles on a crane’s body. Via Israel Wildlife Channel, watch secretary birds walk about in their natural habitat while a sweet-sounding Rosy-Patched Bush-Shrike provide the background music. Ain’t nature something!
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