Yard Birds - # 4 (Brown-headed cowbird)

While certainly not my best photo of the day, I selected it because the Brown-headed Cowbird is only an occasional visitor to my yard and it's possible I won't see one again for awhile (or I may see them every day...hard to say).  When I came downstairs this morning, there were 8 of them, mostly all males as pictured here, chowing down on cracked corn on the patio.  I managed to sneak out the back door and get a couple of shots of these two lookouts before the whole bunch of them flew up into a tree.  The light was horrible so I had to do some lightening on this.  Also a pretty heavy crop.  But hopefully you can see their beautiful iridescent black bodies and chocolaty brown heads!  As well as the flecks of frost on the crook...it was very cold this morning.

Cowbirds are often reviled by birders because they are parasitic nesters, laying their eggs in the nests of smaller songbirds.  Each female will lay one egg (up to 34 in a season!) in the "host" nest where the hatchling will out compete the smaller babies.  This sometimes means death for the smaller and or weaker chicks in the nest.  Not the nicest of nesting habits, but this is how this species evolved.  Europe's Cuckoos as well as several species of ducks also practice nest paracitism.  Nature is fascinating, isn't it?

My most fun shots of the day were a series of two squirrels who were being quite frisky with each other from a branch high over the yard.  My favorite of the sequence is this one - "hey, watcha doin' down there?".  And my best technical shot today was of a backlit female cardinal
.  I was tempted to blip the cardinal, but decided to go with the cowbird since I can get cardinals just about any day whereas cowbirds aren't a daily visitor.  

Hubs and I went out for lunch, and then a nice 2-mile hike through the woods.  Temps were a "balmy" 34 F (+1 C) which felt much better than yesterday but still not anywhere near as good as last year!  Hubs is heading over to the Man-Cave tonight to work on the race car this evening, so I am going to curl up with the cats and watch Downton Abbey!


And, if you haven't already made a pledge to help buy back Blipfoto, please take a minute NOW and visit www.blipfuture.com/invest!  We're over the halfway mark, but still a lot to go!


Happy Hump Day...

Debbi