No birds in this post!!!! I’m trying to clean photos off my desktop as I keep taking more and more almost everyday. The birds will be back in my next post, some decked out in holiday style. Meanwhile…
Variegated Meadowhawk
Fiery Skippers
Sparkling Sap in our Pine TreeSalvia (Sage)Tree Lizard GeometryA few weeks ago
Cotton!
All photos were taken in our yard except the cotton. I saw that when I was hunting for a particular bird that I never saw…
Ferguson excited about his Thanksgiving dinner
One day when I was sitting in the yard watching birds, this little visitor dropped by…and picked a good place to pose.
Sometimes there are 50 or more birds in our yard at one time, eating, hanging out…and the cacophony of bird sounds is pretty intense. Other times there are gentle chirps and buzzes…
Abert’s Towhees
Curve-billed Thrashers
House SparrowGila WoodpeckerRosy-faced Lovebird
House Finches (click to enlarge)
The Anna’s Hummingbirds are sipping from the plants I recently bought.
And perching and fighting and showing their colors…(click to enlarge)
Northern Mockingbird
And my little Orange-crowned Warbler happily winters here…
All of these photos are of male Anna’s Hummingbirds in our yard. We have some females, too, but they are keeping to themselves and don’t seem to want to pose long enough for photos. We have at least 4 males in the yard right now but I do think there is one in particular that poses the most…Comet. So here he and his friends are:
Waving to his friends
I just got some hummingbird (and butterfly) friendly plants to lure them in for pretty photos. So far, no go…Mexican Honeysuckle, Sage (salvia), and Lavender.
I escaped my quarantine the other day, in the late afternoon, for a couple of hours. I went to the Gilbert Riparian Preserve where I go about once a year. I should really go more often as there is an extreme diversity of all sorts of birds…water birds, songbirds, raptors, and always a rarity or 2. I went in pursuit of a rarity this time. I had seen literally hundreds of photos of a Roseate Spoonbill that has been there for a few weeks in my Facebook birding group. Most of the photos were so pretty, up close, so you could see its pink feathered fluffiness in detail. Well, I didn’t get there until about 4pm and I heard it had left for the day so I walked around looking, to no avail, but saw a lot of other birds. About 6pm, as it was getting dark, disappointed, I headed back to my car and saw it in a different pond than those it usually frequents! It was out quite a ways and it was getting dark so I didn’t get those pretty, detailed photos that I had seen from other people. But I saw it and it was awesome and it was a new life bird (lifer)! And I have proof:
It has giant black feet! This is not a bird that you find in Arizona normally. It likes Florida and Texas and other Gulf coasts. Actually, right now there are also 3 more of them at Glendale Recharge Ponds, too, on the completely opposite side of town. I would love to go see them and if it ever cools off here before they leave, I am going to go look for them, too.
But here are a few more of the birds I saw before finding it…
Great Egrets
Great Blue Herons
Green Heron
Snowy Egret
This beautiful red amaranth was all over; I had never seen it there before.
Mallard in Amaranth
Now for some songbirds…
Yellow-rumped Warblers (last photo indicates source of name)
Say’s PhoebeWhite-crowned SparrowVermilion Flycatcher, immature male, SO CUTE!Orange-crowned WarblerTownsend’s Warbler
Different than my yard birds! This makes me want to get back out there birding after this intense heat we have had, much longer than usual, and this horrible quarantine we’re in!!!! It was nice to have a change of scenery…
I wrote this as a PDF file not really intending to make a post of it but since it’s all written and I need a new post pretty soon, just click on the link to read about my backyard bird feeding. You don’t have to download it, you can just click on the title to read it.
Meanwhile, here’s an abandoned Verdin nest that went down in the wind last night. They have several nests in our pine tree. No birds were injured or became homeless.
