Sunday, November 27, 2011

The Gleaners

Douglas County, Oregon, USA
I haven't been getting out much becasue of the rain. Today was still grey and damp, but dry. Lots of birds were foraging. Goldfinches were feasting on teasel seeds, robins were foraging in the hawthorn trees, several varities of sparrows were busy along the roadside, and over a hundrded crows were gleaning in a filbert (hazelnut) orchard. The nuts have been harvested and the leaves have mostly fallen.

There are still plenty of nuts left in the orchard. Most of the crows were foraging on the ground. Some flew off with a stuffed throat, obviously full of nuts. Others were busy trying to crack their nuts. A few flew to the asphalt in front of us, held the nut with both feet, and pounded away. Other preferred to take their nut up onto a tree limb and pound away there.

4 comments:

  1. You have captured this so perfectly. I to am enjoying all the activity going on in the bird kingdom right now. My neighbor I were standing outside talking over the fence close to dusk tonight, when we noticed some small birds all flocked together in the trees around us coming and going making a high chirping sound. We couldn't see them well enough to tell what they were but they sounded so pretty. So much to see if we keep our eyes open.

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  2. Love all the crows Elva! First we had intense heat, so outside sketching was off limits, then we've had a week of pouring rain! But at least everything is now beautiful and clean, gone is all the winter dust!

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  3. Elva, these crows are wonderful! I can almost hear those nuts cracking.

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