Today's New Bird

New to me anyway. Spotted these along the path as I was walking this morning. Came back a couple hours later with the camera and several were there again. Guess they are nesting nearby. Anyway, let me log a new bird today, the Yellow-headed Blackbird (not sure how they came up with that name).

Yesterday, I went to another local nature center and walked around for a couple hours. Didn't see many birds but did get a shot of a new sparrow for my list, the Grasshopper Sparrow (not a good enough shot to share though). Also a few others. This little tree had 2 Eurasian Starlings, a sparrow and an oriel.

Something startled them and I got a shot of the oriel in flight.

I also got a few shots of house finches, unfortunately pretty far up.

And a nice one of this Eastern Kingbird.

There was a lot of Tree Swallow activity in this park too so here's one of those shots.

Knowing they will be coming and going from a birdhouse to feed the kids does make catching swallows in flight much easier.

No parks nearby for me to walk in Jim. I am jealous of that. I could walk down the road as we are out in the sticks and if I walk away from the village perhaps I could see more birds than at our feeders or out the back of the house.

You see varieties I have not seen here. I have never seen an baltimore oriole that is yellow before. I understand that the adult males may sometimes not exhibit the bright orange colouration but I have not seen any here that look like that. The ones that are in our trees and visit the feeder are orange in colouration (males). Have not seen a yellow headed cow bird, just the usual type. Eastern kingbirds I have seen but never photographed.

Nice to see Jim.

Andrew

Thanks Andrew.
I am used to BO's being orange too. Merlin and Google Lens both tell me this is a BO though, so, who am I to argue?
The Yellow-headed bird is a Blackbird, not a cow bird.

Sorry to hear you continue to have problems physically, and with your medical services.
I've rarely had medical problems, but when I have I've felt they provided pretty good service.
I've heard things are getting worse, and I attribute that to the government requiring more reporting and tracking and
thus more administration than ministration for the medical staff, plus the fact that so many more people are demanding more service.
Of course, as we age, we get worse and that just compounds the problems.

Hope you are able to get the services you need relatively quickly and that they work for you.

Apparently I approaching old brain age Jim and can not read! Not sure how I got cow bird out of that, perhaps because they have different coloured heads than their body colour the aging brain made up what it wanted!

I don't expect the back issue is going away other than if there is a surgical intervention. Not sure how I feel about that but I want to know what the options are even if I choose to opt out. I can still enjoy doing things now (unless there is another major flare up), I just need to realize my limitations before attempting something I should not! Thanks for your concern.

I am going to have to look up the yellow head and see if its range extends into southern Ontario.

Andrew

Yes, it does. As I recall you are up near Port Elgin or Owen Sound somewhere. It appears to be reported on about 2% of eBird checklists submitted across southern Ontario. We have areas in MN where it's that same level, or up to 10%.

You are getting some nice bird shots, Jim. I like the yellow headed blackbird. I've never seen one. I like the last of the swallow in flight, too. Rich

I suppose they could have called it a Black-bodied Yellow-head 😁

Very nice captures.

Thanks Rich. Going to Sherburne Nat'l Wildlife Refuge for a couple hours today, hopefully get a few bird shots there.
Then we have the grandson for the weekend, so I might take a non-bird picture soon. 😁

Thanks.

Great variety you have in your neighborhood .. I usually only see the same dozen or so residence .. but occasionally a visitor wanders in ... maybe later this year when they finish updating I may wander over to the wildlife refuge and see whose migrating through ... still envious of your light I don't remember that from my trips up there ...

WhyNot

Nice set Jim that yellow headed blackbird looks lovely or blackbird surprisingly is black but the female is brown 🙂