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Comment by BSOhealth | Hacker News Reader

We recently got a bird feeder with an attached camera (wifi-connected). I had always dabbled in bird watching, but this surprisingly took me to another level. I now feel protective of my local birds as if they were a pet like a dog. And I recognize them day after day.

My favorite bird before was the cardinal because of its amazing color and song.

Now, with the camera, I have realized the incredible intelligence and personality of woodpeckers. They are my new favorite.

The Cornell BirdLab app is another essential tool for appreciating how much life is around (at least in my region). It feels like a cheat code and has also helped me fall in love with a visually mild bird, the Brown Cowbird.

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If you haven't done it yet, read about how the brown-headed cowbird "raises" its young!

Just did, mind blown. I didn't know "parasitic brooding" was a thing in any animals, but totally makes sense.

As always, the HN collective helps my brainspace and experience of the world grow a bit.

Edit: I’ll pay it forward with another one: my favorite fact about bluejays is their evolved mimicry of hawks’ screams, to scare away other birds.

Another fun bird fact about bluejays and crows: listening for a bunch of screaming crows and/or jays is a good way of finding owls, as they both seem to have an inherent hatred of owls, and harass them whenever given a chance. In my area, the poor owls rarely seem to get any rest from being swooped and yelled at all day.

I haven't seen this with owls but we've got some kind small predator bird like a peregrine falcon that the blue jays have it absolutely out for. The most interesting thing is once they start making the alerting calls, an inter-species mob will form with other birds of similar sized that aren't usually aggressive (like northern flickers) and they'll all harass the falcon until it flies off.

We have a big ponderosa pine on our property and sometimes the stellar jays go wild when there is a bird of prey up there.

We have seen barred owls, great horned owls, and cooper’s hawks.

https://imgur.com/a/ymDn7ff

In my area the yelling is always about hawks. The owls here are nocturnal so they don’t overlap.

It's called mobbing!

I've been putting out seed in winter but seeing a Cooper Hawk show up occasionally, I feel a little bad.

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