Sunday, May 07, 2006

New visitors

We had another strong storm starting about 3:55 a.m. Saturday. It's rolling thunder woke me up and Elvis, the 100 pound scaredy Lab kept me up. It subsided after a while and all calmed down after a while, but it was still raining when I got up at 7. Got 1.2 inches. I mention that only because I don't fill my bird cake feeder when it storms. So the bully birds didn't come by in droves. So when I got back from demoing Spiceburst product, just in time for the Kentucky Derby, there were only occasional visitors to my bird bath. I got a treat when I looked up and saw a bright yellow bird timidly approach it and then perch above it in the Juniper tree. Then there was a similarly sized bird with black wings, a large white patch and red body.

Never seen these guys in my yard before, so I got the binocs out to get a better look. Sho-nuff, the yellow bird was a male Yellow Warbler. I had seen these 2 summers ago flocking in an old hackberry tree between Avenue H and Duval on 49th. He finally felt safe enough to bathe, but I never saw the other guy again, to my disappointment. Two separate male Yellows came by though. (stock photo)

I looked through my bird book (the highly recommended Birds of North America by Kenn Kaufman) for the other fellow and came across the Painted Redstart. It's the only bird that's warbler sized with red breast and large white wing patches, so I'm thinking it was him. Problem is, he doesn't normally come around here. He's a Mexican bird whose range barely pokes up into southwest canyonlands west of here. However, the storm blew in from the west, so maybe he was blow in here. I'm told that happens frequently. (stock photo)

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