HOOPOE! 🐥 for #birbsday

My longest lens is only 250mm so this was me trying to sneak up on a Hoopoe in the park. I am 6'2/187cm. I am not built for sneaking LMAOOOO - so this is as close as I could get. 😂✨

#photography #amateurphotography #birds #hoopoe #hoopoes #birdsofmastodon #birdphotography #birdsday #wildlife #grub #insect #wildlifephotography #urbangarden #nature #urbannature #afternoon #italy #italia #bologna #europe #canonphotography
Whilst the Merlin bird identification app is good, it didn't recognize the #hoopoes that have arrived today with the warm weather and that I could hear in the distance. A surprise for me in this current list is the #hawfinch. I suspected that there were probably some around, given the available food sources of ash, beech, hornbeam and cherry, and other people's pictures taken locally, but I've never yet seen one for myself.
#birdsofmastodon
#merlinapp
#birdidentification
#birdsong

#Hoopoes is back in the hamlet, shouting his little beak off. Now it's really spring.
I love its name: Upupa epops. Onomatopoeic or wot!

Recording of the call is on Wikipedia entry.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_hoopoe

Eurasian hoopoe - Wikipedia

We moved further to the west to Las Marismas de Barbate with our guests yesterday 😊

Here we were enthralled with the history, culture and splendour of Northern Bald #Ibis feeding and at the nearby colony, masses of #migrating #Shorebirds and #migratory passerines like this one of several Eurasian #Hoopoes passing through ! 😊

#FlywayBirding

Is it possible that when food was abundant, laying extra eggs was adaptive because it would be a way to store "fresh food" for periods of high food demands?
Barón et al. discovered that hoopoes use extra eggs as packed food to feed older siblings. Read now ahead of print!

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/728883

#eggs #hoopoes #adaptive #nestlings #reproductiveSuccess