Thursday's Bird Watch

 This is an "update" on the baby Anna's Hummingbird I featured on my post of May 2nd.  That post reported on the first day the juvenile left its nest in the Central Courtyard here at Dallas Retirement Village on April 23rd.  Since then, we have had quiet a variety of hummingbirds visit our juice feeder on our balcony, and it's always a fun chore to decide it it's an Anna's Hummingbird or a Rufous Hummingbird, and if it is a male, a female or a juvenile.   This last Thursday evening, May 9th, we got this close-up of what I believe is our baby of this year as it spent close to a half hour at our feeder drinking and preening its feathers.  We can now tell with certainty that our juvenile is a male as we note the change in his plumage, for instance the darkening under the chin.  If you look closely, you will notice his tongue sticking out.  I'm not sure if that was a part of his preening or an objection to having his photo taken.

Big Day on Baskett Butte

With another warm day in the weather forecast, Jeanette and I made plans to get an early start for a big day of birding at nearby Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge. We choose to take the Rich Guadagno Memorial Trail which loops around Baskett Butte. When we arrived at the trailhead a little after seven, and turned on eBird to make a Checklist, we discovered by pure coincidence it was Global Big Day in the birding world. It was a magnificent morning of bright sunshine filled with bird song.

 

Western Meadowlark

The song of the Western Meadowlark greeted us immediately when we stepped from the car. Before our hike was over we had counted more meadowlarks than ebird would allow, so we pared back the number to 15, the highest they would accept.

 Jeanette was kept busy with her iPhone using the Merlin ID to identify bird songs, and then entering each species into eBird, for a total of 43 separate species. Here is our eBird Checklist.

It was a day of birds and bees.  Here is a Yellow-fronted Bumble Bee.

Cat's Ears were always a favorite in my wildflower days before birds.  I now need to brush up on them again.

  

Thursday's Bird Watch

We had a successful nesting this year of an Anna's Hummingbird here at Dallas Retirement Village in the Lodge Central Courtyard.  This photo is of the juvenile just after leaving the nest for the first time on Tuesday, April 23rd.  There was only one baby, and a number of residents have enjoyed checking it out over the last two weeks.  It did not seem to have any interest in returning to the nest, perhaps it was glad to be out of the nest which seemed to be coming a little too camped, and probably boring.  The mom was able to find it and feed it again as it tried out perching in a couple of different trees.