At the feeders, and Winged Migration

While doing my weekly Project Feederwatch counts this morning, I got some decent photos at the feeders--typical visitors, but I had at least 30 birds out there at one point, which is a lot for my feeders.

As predicted, the American goldfinches are loving the new nyjer sock. Still no siskins yet, though, at least not that I've seen.
Note that I caught two of them in flight; I had put the setting on that little running man, "Sport," or whatever it's called. But the wings are still a little blurred. Maybe it was the low light. Still, that's better than I usually get!

Here's a beautiful White-crowned sparrow:
You can see some of the mealworms I got from NC Mealworms there in the tray. I haven't seen any bluebirds eating them but the worms always disappear, so someone's loving them!

Guess this cold snap and the snow have made life difficult for the little guys. Today the high was only supposed to be about 20 degrees, so I didn't take my walk. I'm hoping tomorrow might be a little more bearable, because I'd like to get out on the marsh and see what's happening out there. A couple of evenings this past week, I saw some ducks landing on the ponds. Maybe there will be more than just the usual mallards.

Speaking of which, we finally watched Winged Migration today--wow. It was really a beautiful movie, though I kept wishing they'd ID more of the birds they showed. That first bird they show--it's this beautiful songbird. It reminds me of a variegated thrush, but I don't even know where the bird was from. Anyone remember that bird? He had those big thrush eyes and a thrush-like body.

I also wished they'd showed some of our warblers, but when I mentioned that aloud--and you're not gonna believe this--Bird-Creeped-Out-Kat (oy--but I didn't want to steal Non-Birding from Sharon and Non-Birding Bill!)--anyway, BCOK said, "honey, do you really think they'd be able to find and follow a bunch of tiny warblers?"

OH.
MY.
GOD.

A totally logical birdy point from The Kat! My jaw about dropped to the floor. That Kat--she's a keeper.

There was one horrifying scene in which they were showing these beautiful Canada geese in flight, with this nice music playing, and then BLAMMO! BLAMMO! hunters are shooting the geese out of the sky! Kat started screaming, and I just buried my face in my pillow. That was rough. The Kat said, "March of the Penguins was really sad, but at least no one was shooting at the penguins!"

So--I then watched the "Making of" portion, and I realized why they didn't follow any smaller birds: they actually raised all the birds they followed. Canada geese, Grey-lag geese, Bar-Nosed (or Bar-Headed? can't remember) Geese, African white pelicans, some different kinds of cranes--birds they figured would imprint on the people who raised them, and thus be easier to follow and film. I was a little disappointed, but then I guess they did do what they set out to do, which was film them migrating in the fall and the spring. I just wonder what they did with them when they were done filming. Were the birds released into the wild? They were with these birds 24/7, hugging them, feeding them, nurturing them--those birds wouldn't survive in the wild. Maybe they gave them to a zoo or something. Anyway, I envied their closeness to the birds (one pelican really loved being hugged), but I also felt sorry that the birds didn't really have normal lives. Still--they were pretty spoiled--well, except for those poor Canada geese that got shot! *sniffle*