Dear Husband came out to the kitchen to sit this morning and said, “There’s a gross beak! Wait, that’s not right.” I walked over to look out the window, and there is our token Rufous Sided Towhee! DH realized the colors were right, but the beak was wrong for a gross beak. I had no idea that he had been paying attention to the birdwatching that had gone on when my mother was with us. Clearly, he’s interested.
We get several birds who stop by on their way to more northerly homes for the summer. It’s time to watch for the yellow-bellied sapsucker, and the evening gross beak.
P.S. Cop Car, I checked, and it’s an Eastern Towhee, not a Spotted Towhee! *G*
Well, aren’t you getting precise in your identifications? Good for you! Husbands do pay attention to the darndest things, don’t they?
Saw a little blue heron fly over while on my morning walk, yesterday, and am hearing eastern phoebes and eastern bluebirds. Neither seems to be interested in nesting in our yard this year (phoebes, to our knowledge, never have – they just hang about.) The red-shouldered hawks that I blogged about a few weeks ago are still here – nesting in our woods, I think. The house finch built a perfectly fine nest on our front porch, but hasn’t been seen there for about one week.
Good birding to you.
P.S. Please be kind to your grosbeaks by not insulting them by writing about them using what was, undoubtedly, their original name of gross beak. *chuckling*
I don’t think we have phoebes here, and we rarely get to see the Eastern Bluebirds. We’re more likely to see Cooper’s Hawks or Red-tailed hawks . We have more than our share of house finches.
Thank you for the info on grosbeaks. I tried looking it up on the fly, but it seems Google is not as precise as you. I promise we will be kind to them!
If it’s big and greyish and in your area, it is undoubtedly one of your great blue herons. They are around here all year, as far as I can tell.
How I envy you the birds you have year round! I do love the herons and egrets. If they were here all year long, I still think I would love them as much.
The GB heron is the only one that I know we see throughout the year; but, at a distance, I might think that a little blue or a green-backed heron was a crow flapping about. BTW: Your chronicles concerning coming/going of the various bird species is quite interesting to me. Add one more that we see in winter: American goldfinch.