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September birds

The weather is easing a bit–the highs each day are in the low- to mid-nineties, and sunset is noticeably earlier each day. The feeders are getting a lot of business, and fall migration is going full swing. We think of hummingbirds as the pugnacious ones, but yesterday I watched a bunch of goldfinches trying hard to win the prize.

They started out fairly civilized.
But that didn’t last long.
They really got into it.
Reinforcements flew in.
I just never knew they were like this.
Sheesh, just get along. There’s enough for everyone.
For a change of pace, an unusual sight: a great blue heron and an osprey sharing a tree across the cove. The heron flew in and the osprey was clearly a little unsettled but it stuck around for a half hour or so before it flew off to a nearby perch.

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Summertime

It’s really summertime here.
Baby birds everywhere, like the little cardinal hanging out at the pond.
Bewick’s wren in the live oak tree
Golden fronted woodpecker in the live oak. The girls have orange and yellow, and the boys get fancy with red in the middle.
Green anole lizard, showing off. We have at least two other kinds of lizards that I can identify: the Texas fence lizard, and all the other lizards.
Let’s assume this is a Texas fence lizard. It probably is.

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Early Summer, Continued

First, as promised, our gate flag.

This morning I went on the monthly San Marcos Bird Walk. I always learn a lot; the leader is very good at telling us what we’re hearing and seeing, and there’s a pretty good cross section of people although they mostly skew to retirees. Today we saw a number of painted buntings, which are one of the most spectacularly decorated songbirds.

They are pretty from the front, but not all that spectacular. But wait . . .
From the back they just look like someone made it up to be silly because who would be that colorful?
We can hear them at Tedderhaven but so far haven’t seen one. We’ll see it eventually, I’m sure.