Imagination Kindled: A Very Birdy Day
It finally rained! Not just a little drizzle, but the real deal. It rained pretty heavily for several hours and more lightly the rest of the day. I was thrilled to see it. We are supposed to get more rain on the weekend. Maybe our trees won’t die!
The birds seemed to enjoy the rain too. There certainly were a lot of them although not as many as we had a month ago. The Goldfinch have gone north to breed. Gone north to breed? Do birds do that? Well, the Goldfinches do. They go to Canada to breed and come back here in December or January. They breed in the winter. I’m sure someone understands this, but i don’t. So today, we had “the regulars.”
A lot of orange Cardinals. We don’t seem to have red ones anymore. Only orange and they all look terribly angry. Lots — bunches and bunches — of Nuthatches, Tufted Titmouses, Chickadees and Mourning Doves.
I took pictures and they didn’t all fly away the minute I took my camera out of the bag. Yay!
Congratulations on the rain!! What wonderful news! I hope you get enough before it all freezes and turns to snow, to enjoy a bit of Fall. The bird pictures are gorgeous and thank you once again for sharing such beauty with me. Today I saw a large bird of which species I couldn’t identify. It wasn’t a crow or raven or magpie, although that’s the size. It had a bit of red and a bit of dull blue among black or deep brown feathers. I think it got off course somewhere…
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I wouldn’t even mind snow. Rain, snow, whatever. Just WATER!!
You can look up birds on Merlin, which is Cornell University’s bird ID website. But there are a lot of them, so if you type in “need bird ID” you’ll get a list of places that will help you. I have books, but I usually look online first because it’s faster.
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They really are orange, aren’t they? Haven’t seen any of them up here yet.
Leslie
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So far, I only know about ours and a flock in North Carolina. Whether they are a real genetic change and this is a new bird — or not — we’ll have to see. But it does look like the orange color IS genetically transmitted because we now have at least a dozen orange Cardinals and they are growing up. Soon it will be time for the males to go form their own family and that will be the big test.
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Yay for birds that don’t flee the camera, and even a bigger yay for the rain – wonderful post 😀
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Following our orange Cardinals has become a thing. Owen noticed yesterday that we have easily a dozen of them in at least two different nestings … maybe three. Some of the babies still have parts of their baby pin feathers. Meanwhile, the first round of fledglings are nearly full grown, so the boys will have to leave and form their own families. Can they mate with red Cardinals? Usually, the females are drawn to the males by color. The brighter and redder the male, the more attractive he is to the ladies. But ALL of these guys are orange … so … are these birds going to be a new kind of Cardinal?
And yes, the rain. We got about an inch and a half. We need about 8 or 9 inches more. Soon would be better than later, but even that 1-1/2 inch 12-hour rain helped. More please!
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Here’s sending more rain your way . . . and that is so interesting on your cardinals. Most intriguing. Is there a local bird society you can ask?
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