Seen yesterday - the first butterfly of the year. Round these parts, that’s early.
j
Red Admiral, I think? Always pretty.
Power-pole hawk:
Sprinkler-hawk:
Post-hawk:
Same juvenile Cooper’s Hawk kept flying past me and re-posing for a new picture (a vehicle finally startled it away from the last perch).
Northern Shoveler showing off his usually concealed-when-not-in-flight powder-blue shoulder patch and iridescent green speculum:
A handsome (possibly juvenile) Say’s Phoebe:
A handsome Say’s Phoebe eating breakfast:
I’m used to seeing these guys hawking insects in the air, but this one was picking fat larvae off the ground, one after the other. Their eyesight is insane, because I couldn’t find a single one peering at the ground. But it kept finding more when I couldn’t.
Beautiful birds!
That’s an amazing photograph.
Correct, of course. In Shoreham, which is (as the name suggests) on the coast, and therefore relatively mild. And the butterfly was on a south facing wall at around noon; but man, butterflies in January? Surprising.
And mostly I was dropping by to say, great bird pics! (As always).
j
And today in nature I heard… woodpeckers drumming. Almost February…
j
I’ve seen some signs of spring here. I was faffing around in the back yard yesterday and had a mockingbird taking close note of my activities. I suspect he’s checking out one of the large bushes back there as a nest site and was displeased I was in ‘his’ yard.
I also heard a couple birds singing early this morning - the leaders in the dawn chorus that shall commence in earnest in March.
The Moon and Venus.
This is about as close as they get, at least this time around.
If you look closely, Venus is illuminated in the same phase as the Moon.
Now that is cool!
j
And… out on the bike today:
(Apologies to anyone trying to look at that on a phone.)
It’s not like I haven’t reported on deer before, but I can’t remember seeing a bigger herd than this - not an easy count, but getting on for thirty, I think, and with that one strikingly light colored individual.
Thoughts?
j
Gorgeous! I’ve been seeing a small herd congregate in the neighbor’s pasture lately, but not as many as that.
My husband came home late at night one day last week and found a herd spread out amongst our yard, the neighbor’s on one side and another neighbor’s across the street. Probably a couple dozen in all.
I was walking the dogs in the woods behind our house when all three were suddenly drawn to the same spot. They had their noses buried in the snow, rooting around. I thought - oh no, what did they find? I walked over to them and could see some fur and a paw/foot. I scraped snow away to see what I was dealing with. It was a frozen solid musk rat! There were no visible injuries to it, no blood, just frozen. There is a pond about a block away, which seems a bit far for it to be wandering this time of year. (They don’t hibernate.) Maybe a owl or hawk grabbed it and then dropped it. I felt bad for the poor thing. We walk in that area every afternoon and the chances that the dogs would leave it alone are zero so I picked it up and put it as high as I could in a crook of a tree. I thought something would come along and snap it up for dinner. But it was still there 3 days later. The dogs were still way too interested in it and would jump up and try to get it. I finally took it out of the tree and put it on the ground behind our shed (the dogs don’t have access to that area). I’m going to check to see if it’s still there.
Not an albino, but definitely has some sort of genetic variation thing going on there.
Leucism is the word. Discourse indicates that @tamerlane already linked to the same wikipage in a reply on Sep 25, 2023
Not today, but yesterday I saw this bird at my birdbath. I didn’t recognize it so I’m counting on you folks to tell me what it is. I live on the outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico. I know there are a lot of birds that look similar. I can tell it’s not a female house finch, I see those all the time and the beak isn’t stout enough. Thanks in advance for any help!
That looks like a good candidate. The curved bill is a clue.