Monday, March 28, 2011

The Red Bird

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Like most birders, I spend a lot of time looking for, watching and blogging about "interesting" birds; in other words, birds that we don't see often in our area and that I have to make a special effort to find.  When it comes to our everyday birds, I often don't mention them unless I see them doing something "interesting," such as mating.  This is a pity because some of our most common birds are always worthy of attention.

The Northern Cardinal - or "Red Bird" as people here call it - is a case in point. There are surely few birds anywhere that can match the male Cardinal for sheer beauty of plumage and yet I rarely bother to . Here are a few shots of one of our resident male Cardinals.

 
 


The Weekend

I didn't have time for much birding on the weekend but during lunch outdoors with friends in Cypress I had a sighting of a Swainson's Hawk. That's year bird #189.

I've been seeing a lot of butterflies lately, including lots of Swallowtails passing through our yards.


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2 comments:

Dorothy Borders said...

It's unfortunate that we so often take our common birds for granted. They are every bit as beautiful and interesting as their more exotic cousins. In fact, to people in other parts of the world or country, THEY are the exotic ones!

That's a gorgeous Tiger Swallowtail. I've been seeing a lot of these in my garden this month - more than I remember from past years. I always get lots of swallowtails, but usually they are different species.

Jeff said...

Almost all the swallowtails I've seen this year have been tigers.

When I first arrived in the USA, one of the few birds I really really wanted to see was the N Cardinal. I was awestruck when I got see one!