Wild Wednesday ~ Birds!

After getting a bit of a late start bird-watching this spring (I was still in winter-torpor mode through most of April), I went on a few walks with our local birding club and then went out in earnest around our property, heading out at least once, sometimes twice every day.

Yellow-rumped warbler

Without wishing to minimize the very real skills of my professional birding friends, I think a lot of success in bird-watching comes from being in the right place at the right time.

Rose-breasted grossbeak

And I've been very lucky that birds like our property and that I'm home to check on their activities on a daily basis.

Baltimore oriole

This least flycatcher, too, was lucky I was home yesterday when he flew into the window on our sunroom door. He lay on his back, stunned, and I brought him in the house and set up a little grass nest for him. After a couple of hours, he seemed to have recovered sufficiently and I set him on the kiwi vine on the deck. He sat their a few minutes before disappearing in the moment I looked away.






And speaking of flycatchers, while I was tending to the least, which is our smallest flycatcher, a great-crested flycatcher, which is one of our largest, arrived to claim territory in the trees around our house. It's a bird I need to relearn every spring, though I think now that I've spent an afternoon listening to him whoop and trill, I'll have it down pat.



What's wild in your neck of the woods this week?