A House Wren visits the hummingbird feeder. In their quest for nesting sites, they seem to mistake the camera lenses for holes and check cams out a lot. Cute little stinkers. One of them is right now filling the Chickadee box with sticks.
Hey y'all, Paxon and I are back from a week off, where we went birding along the Texas Gulf Coast and at Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge, outside Austin, TX.
We saw lots of eastern screech owls, a lot of standard spring migrating warblers, and lots of roseate spoonbills and other wading birds nesting at High Island.
Here were my highlights from the week:
1. Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary, on the Bolivar Peninsula (across from Galveston Island), we got rather close to huge numbers of American Avocets in breeding plumage and Black Terns.
2. Galveston Island, in small brackish marsh, in the center of the island, a large group of male and female Wilson's Phalaropes, feeding and doing their typical twirling motions.
(The females are colorful and the males are dull).
3. Balcones Canyonlands NWR, I got two LIFERS that I had been chasing for a long time... Scott's Oriole (the last species of oriole i had not seen in the US, now I have them all!) and the endangered Black-capped Vireo (finally)!!!
photographs: tern - Jeff Dyck; avocets - photolady57, phalropes - Rick Grupe; oriole - Andy & Chrissy; vireo - Keith Turpin
Swamp sparrow, Bay Area (California). OUGH my relatives have it so good! There is a pond walking distance from their house that gets sooo many birds year-round which are migratory here....
After some good breakfast and wing practice, the first Robin baby has left the nest an hour ago. Robins cannot fly properly when they fledge, so the young ones follow the parents around by foot for a couple of days, learning how to feed and survive. I am not sure if the other two will follow today but they might. You can watch on my website or on my Birdsy channel on https://birdsy.com/c/Ostdrossel3