The other day I looked out and to my delight, a few of them were flitting about in the grass, looking for tasty bugs. I grabbed the camera and took some pictures, even though they were very far away. I hoped I would get something to show!
The less colorful one in the back is a female, this is a pair of Western Bluebirds
I think it's interesting that these "bluebirds" have red breasts!
"I'm lookin' fer bugs and wormies!"
"I found one!"
"I enjoyed the bug...see? My beaky is empty!"
Before I got into WoW I used to be somewhat of an amateur birdwatcher, so yes I know there's more than one type of bluebird :-P Gorgeous pictures, I love birds. I used to want a Macaw but unforunately birds and cats don't tend to get along and we have 6 cats so! I've always loved how most female birds tend to be less flashy. Kind of opposite of how it is with humans!
ReplyDeleteOMG you would LOVE to live here! There are so many bird species here! Thank you for your compliments, I was thrilled to see that our camera actually got pictures of these birds, they were so far away!
ReplyDeleteYeah, we love cats...but...we have a parrot and well...yeah. You have six cats? I wish I could visit with them! I love macaws too! I wanted one but those beaks...man. The sexual dimorphic thing is very interesting too.
Yeah your camera seems to have pretty awesome zoom :-P I don't know much about the bird species where I live currently sadly, I did most of my birdwatching back east before I moved to MO.
ReplyDeleteI saw the pictures of the parrot, he's a beauty (she? I don't remember if you mentioned it's sex!) Yeah macaws are kind of scary with their beaks, I like my fingers! Yep, six cats here and three dogs. We have a small farm of spoiled furry kids :-P
Gotta love the internet...do a search like, "bird species (your state)" and I am sure you'll get a listing if you're interested! :)
ReplyDeleteSteve and I used to go through $200 every few months for seeds to care for the insane amount of birds that come to the feeders...you could watch the level of seed drop by the hour! We just can't afford that these days, but I think we're going to get some today because it's about to be baby bird season and it would be wonderful to see them all again!
Pumpkin is a female Caique and we got her about 10 years ago after I saw a picture of her and her two brothers while I was doing searches for Caiques for sale. I've had two Caiques before and they're wonderful parrots with Amazon-like personalities in a conure-sized body.
We have 3 dogs too! Molly is our third dog...I'll have to tell her story at some point. She's a stray that we took in a few months ago!
200 is a lot to spend on birdfeed! We have some bird visitors but with our dogs running around in our fence they don't tend to stay long! Last year we had a next full of bunnies in our backyard though. My husband almost ran over them with the lawn mower! Luckily he saw them and they were fine.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about Caiques to be honest, I've seen pictures of them before though. Pumpkin is an adorable name for a bird though! If we ever don't have cats at some point I might get a bird, but I always feel bad when birds have clipped wings. I guess part of the reason I love birds is because they can fly, ah to have that freedom...
What type of dog is Molly? There are tons of strays in our town, I'd take them all in if I could but we already have too many! There's one white dog we've seen run around a lot lately, I think he's someone's pet because he looks well fed. He's a medium sized, fluffy thing that I nicknamed Marshmellow. First time we saw him he followed us home on a walk and stood in our yard for a few hours. I checked to see if he was still there after we went inside for a while and he was two inches from our screen door. It broke my heart :(
Oh guess what?! We DID buy birdseed! But we only had to pay $65 for 170 pounds of food! The reason it used to cost so much before was that we would buy NYJER thistle seed...it's like $1/pound and aptly called "The Black Gold" of bird seed. We get two types of goldfinches here and they are wild about that thistle seed. It's just too expensive!
ReplyDeletePumpkin's wings aren't clipped because she has such a heavy body + she's not in good enough shape to fly so we can get away with not clipping them. As it is, she sinks very fast!
Oh the heartbreak of strays. But you can't save the world. At least you're doing your part, and so are we with our dear Molly girl!