Best Birding at Home Ever!

Today was misty and damp, plus I had a lot on my plate between work and chores. Still, the time I did manage to steal time for firing up Merlin Bird ID and listening to/looking for birds paid off big time. I just knew I’d see cool birds this spring, eventually.

I can’t bury the lead: look who helped me feed the horses and shovel poop this evening! It’s a yellow-headed blackbird! Whoa! It was quite friendly and just hung around as I did chores (I was hyperventilating that I saw what I thought I saw).

The morning was equally exciting. I heard a weird sound when I was out feeding chickens. Then I recalled Lee saying he’d heard something that sounded like a heron, but not like our usual ones. Sure enough, it was a green heron.

Actually, I saw them flying and realized it was a pair. We have them sometimes, so it wasn’t a big surprise, but the amount of calling these guys did helped cement the sound of green herons in my mind. They went on all day, I think.

Another bird was giving a concert as well. The great crested flycatcher had come up before, and I always figured Merlin had it confused with our common (yet breathtaking) scissor tail flycatchers.

However, the pair (or more) in the woods today sounded distinctly different from their showy cousins. I could tell exactly where they were, because they were calling repeatedly, but I only got a glimpse of two of them changing trees.

But wait, there’s more. Also among the cacophony (of course with cardinals, wrens, titmice, and woodpeckers), was another cool bird. I sure wish I’d seen the yellow-breasted chat, though hearing it was interesting enough. This is another bird I thought might have been identified in error, but when it repeatedly registered and I became able to pick it out, I believed it.

Even if you aren’t a birder, you can see why I was pretty happy with today’s variety—39 birds in all, even without all the winter sparrows. There was a gray catbird in the mix, too, and I almost got a photo of it!

In mammal news, the painkillers seem to be working on Apache. He had the gumption to try to get away when I came at him with his medication. And he’s eating more, too. The other horses are so good. They hang out with him a lot so he isn’t too lonely.

Oh, one more bit of bird news: there’s a harrier nest in Sara’s part of the ranch! That was exciting to me, since they’re my favorite raptor. Now, please enjoy some flowers.