Birds ...and sometimes other pictures

Although these pictures were taken in Portugal last year, they are very fitting for today's heat.

Sparrow on a fence.

Crows like all birds open their beaks to cope with the heat as they cannot sweat. The whole weekend is going to be hot, I hope my crows will be able to cope. Luckily they all have easy access to cooler water as all territories meet at the lake.

When your parents tell you to forage for lunch yourself.

More baby crow pictures.

Time for a duck. You rarely see tufted ducks like this as they stay in the water most of the time. And I really don't understand why, they look rather dapper.

With the hot weather in the moment, do as this crow does. find a nice place in the shade.

The cuckoo is a bird that your hear more often then you see it. When I was at the North Sea I was very lucky, I saw a lot of cuckoos, because there was a lake where a lot of sedge and reed warblers nest, which of course means lots of possible nests for the cuckoo to lay their eggs in. One morning I counted seven cuckoos, but most of the times I only saw them for seconds when they changed their positions, but then this one decided to perch on a lonely branch above the reeds. So I took some pictures and while I did that a very angry sedge warbler attacked the cuckoo and made him leave. While many think the host birds just let the brood parasitism happen, that is not quite true. Some warblers are known for attacking cuckoos and about 10 to 30% give up nests when they find a cuckoos egg in it or throw the egg out.

The baby crows already start to try to forage for food, but most of the times they don't know what to do with the stuff they find. Like one found a peanut one of the parents had hidden, the other one an acorn, but not knowing if and how to eat them, they were discarded in favor of being fed by their parents.

A Western yellow wagtail.

There are actually three of them, but those two seem to do lots of things together while the third one likes to do things alone.

Mr. Common Redstart resting on a freshly planted apple tree.

Baby crow

(Sorry for the shaky material, it is not easy to film with a big lens without a monopod, but I just had to do it, because they are just so cute and clumsy.)

This whole week we had strange weather for this time of the year, one moment it was pouring, the next the sun came out. This leads to wet crows who have to shake of the water and sit in the sun to get dry.