Canopy Roads of South Georgia

Summer Tanager, Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 April 2012

Female summer tanager:

Picture of a female summer tanager (Piranga rubra) by Gretchen Quarterman
for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 April 2012.

-jsq

Great Blue Heron, 22 April 2012

Heron in slash pine tree:

Pictures of Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) by Gretchen Quarterman
for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 April 2012.

Here's a slideshow.

How many little birds are there?

It's kind of hard to tell with the low light, the fuzzy cell phone video, and especially with them crawling over each other. You can hear them, though!

Here's the video:

How many little birds are there?
Video by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 April 2012.

Probably house wrens. Nesting under the eaves of the farm workshop.

-jsq

Pileated vs. Ivory Billed Woodpeckers

There is some confusion of the Lord God Bird, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker that was thought extinct until the 1940s until 2004, with our local Pileated Woodpecker. They are similar colors and similar size:

Pileated WoodPecker (Dryocopus pileatus) Flying: Dark trailing wing edge Perched: Small white patch Length: 16-19 in. Wing span: 26-30 in.	Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Flying: White trailing wing edge Perched: Large white patch Length: 18-20 in. Wing span: 30-33 in.
Above illustrations by N. John Schmitt © Cornell Lab of Ornithology

You can clearly see when this bird flew overhead it had a black trailing wing edge:

Pair of Pileateds in a Pine Tree

What are these, climbing turkeys? They're almost big enough.

Or maybe a pair of Southern Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) on a longleaf pine (Pinus Palustris).

I got pretty close; they just laughed. Eventually I walked away to do something else, and they flew into another tree directly over my head, where you see them in this video:

Pileated Woodpeckers, Dryocopus pileatus, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman, 7 November 2011.

-jsq

Caw!

Crow on a longleaf candle:
Update 10:00 23 August 2011: Gretchen says that's not a crow; it's a smaller bird; some sort of flycatcher.

You lookin' at me?

Turkey ambling along

That bird is in no hurry:

Video of wild turkey
by Gretchen Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 31 May 2011

-jsq

Hawks

One way to keep the field rodents down is with a hawk:

Here's a video of it flying:

Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis,
Video by John S. Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 10 June 2011.

Factory Chickens

We were just driving and these were in front of us:

Where are we going?

I recognized them from Food, Inc. They get them out of the chicken houses at night. It was maybe around 8 o'clock in the morning. (7:51 according to the timestamp.) According to Food, Inc., they're put in the cages as little babies, and they put the sides down. These chickens have probably never seen daylight before:

Cardinal

Cardinal in a tree:

Picture by Gretchen Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 23 January 2011.