Has anyone seen that before? Zim and I have a couple of does with fawns who come around the house and we have been shocked by the number of deer flies on them this year. Over the last few days, we have seen some newly hatched phoebes landing and flying all around the deer, and then finally picking deer flies right off the deer! At first, the deer jumped when the birds flew right into them, but now it appears that the deer are allowing it and standing still while this takes place. Wow! The whole world is in harmony out there!!!

I wish we could train those little phoebes to grab deer flies from Zim while he works in the garden!

Cool post. Thanks for sharing.

That is cool !
The baby phoebes we had fledged and fly all over the ranch house yard.

I've seen brown headed cow birds eating bugs off of deer many times.

At my friend Sandy's, they would eat bugs off of her goats. She caught a lot of the brown headed cow birds, on accident, in her sparrow/starling trap.

Keith

Should be killing every brown headed cowbird you can catch

Parasitic nesters, meaning they lay their eggs in someone else's nest to be incubated and raised by others. And the chick will push all other chicks out to their death.

Send some of those phoebes my way, I wouldn't mind one riding my shoulder and keeping the sand/deer flies off of me

Phoebees are one of my favorite songbirds. I had a pair build a nest on a beam on my front porch at camp and it's been occupied for the last 4-5 springs. They are great bug catchers.

Thanks for posting theis. I looked them up not being familiar with them. Turns out its the same little bird I used to watch land on a dead oak limb and dart from it grabbing bugs as they flew by.. I think they were also nesting in the peak of the house on a window ledge. There was a 3' overhang and it faced east so was well protected from both wind and rain. I enjoyed watching them but for some reason never looked them up to see what they were.

Phoebes are neat little birds. We have a nest under the elevated deck, and they just fledged their second brood this weekend.

Keeping the cowbirds out of their nest is a daily battle when they are laying eggs.

Watching nature the other night and basically all the fish on there had some other kind of fish that would come over and eat algae off of it, even out of some of their mouths.

Bad here too. Named one deer Twitch.

Could I, or should I interfere.

What is that dope on a rope
hung where cattle enter/exit?

When that is used, the coon leather is clear.

One elder fur buyer said those leather marks
on coon are from spring fly larva.

For birds this year we have swifts.
Told the wife I am now a swiftie fan lol.

We have a small platform under our eaves that Phoebes have been using for at least 20 years. They are great bug eaters. You can always tell a Phoebe by the way they are always bobbing their tail. Very cool bird.

Patrice,

Take a baseball type hat and staple fly strips to it. Deer flies will land on it and can't get away. Trust me it works. I would post a pic but don't know how. Skeeters get caught on the fly tape also.

Not to worry Computer Hater, I got their number. LOL

Zim

Dragonflies love pounding deer flies too. A squadron of dragons can do damage to a swarm of flies. The flies that don't get killed vamoose when dragonflies start tearing up their pals

Wear fake dragon fly on wire on your hat, works GREAT, dragon flies are insect and deer fly preditor

x2, and the Brown heads are the males, Females are different.

Thanks, Dan!

Wytex, we have had a couple phoebe nests around, but one in particular on the back of the house, under the eaves of course. Love those little guys! Thanks for the photo!

Keith, that's nuts! I can't believe there could actually be a good use for cowbirds.

We'll send some down there, BTLowry!

They sure are, Lugnut. They're fun to watch!

Thanks, Providence Farm! They always try to nest under an overhang, and as Trapper7 mentioned, they bob their their tails the entire time they're on a perch.

K snow, our cowbirds seem to come and go here. We saw a few early this spring, and then none. No complaints about that!

OhioBoy, that's like the birds that eat parasites off of crocodiles!

If you try that, Wright Brothers, report back and let us know how it turns out.

They sure are, Trapper7!

Computer Hater, I'm sure you saw Zim's hat patch photo! He'll still get bit on his arms and hands. The Deer fly patches he uses are self-adhesive ones he originally bought from some guy in Michigan, but I guess they're available everywhere now.

I love dragonflies, Rat_Pack! I don't see many here in the woods. Just a few, maybe coming up from the creek.

I've seen those, RdFx! A guide we were with once had those!

We're glad our cowbirds are scarce this year, BigBob.