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I think this may be the same bird that built a nest in Piggy's stall last spring. It was very territorial then. Right now there is peace between the two.

Cowbird?

Somewhere i have a picture of one of mine with a row of them down his back.

Cute!!

I was looking everywhere for the bird until I realized he was riding

Amazing that a 6 ounce bird isn’t afraid of a 1,000 pound horse. Although birds have the ultimate survival skill of flight.

I think that's a Brewers blackbird. I regularly have a consulting biologist come through my place. The 70 acres behind me is a conservation easement parcel for the East Bay Regional Parks District and the access they have to it sucks so I let her come through my place. She's a delight and I've learned a to from her. She always marvels at the species diversity on my property. Birds are her passion and walking with her is like walking with a cat LOL
There are more species of birds seen in a few minutes on my place than several hours hiking in the thousands of acres across the street. I think it's the horses.

I would love to go around with your "birder". Piggy has shown a low tolerance for sharing his space. At the previous boarding barn, there were a lot of peafowl. He would "herd" them in the arena and would even go out of his way to attack them if they crossed his space. He once was trotting in the arena and made a deliberate effort to stomp on a peacocks tail resulting in a good loss of tail feathers. I'm glad that it's just a little black bird and not a heron or a sandhill crane.

Cute! A few years back, a neighbor's hen was being bullied by the rooster, so she flew over the fence and took up residence at the boarding stable. Specifically, she moved in to Obie's pen and made herself at home. 17H Obie was so careful and gentle with "his" chicken until she decided to go home after a couple months.

goldhorse wrote:I would love to go around with your "birder". Piggy has shown a low tolerance for sharing his space. At the previous boarding barn, there were a lot of peafowl. He would "herd" them in the arena and would even go out of his way to attack them if they crossed his space. He once was trotting in the arena and made a deliberate effort to stomp on a peacocks tail resulting in a good loss of tail feathers. I'm glad that it's just a little black bird and not a heron or a sandhill crane.

Piggy is wise. Peafowl can be assholes. My 7th grade English teacher was nearly killed by his pet peacock (appropriately named Pretty Boy Floyd) when he walked under a tree in his garden and Floyd dropped out of the tree and raked Mr Boylan's neck with his spurs, cutting into his jugular vein. If the neighbors hadn't seen it happened and called 911 and rendered immediate aid, Mr Boylan would have bled to death on his garden path, and I don't know if the killer would have ever been caught!