Bringing home the goodies

A rather nondescript bird, but one of my Desert favorites, the Abert's Towhee.  As I was taking these shots today at the Salt River, I thought he/she was collecting nesting materials and it wasn't until I saw the photos on screen that the bird had a bunch of goodies for the kids.  What was interesting was that it would put the whole pile of worms, bees, whatever on the ground as it gathered more.  Also surprising was the number of bees it had gathered.  Towhees don't catch insects on the wing, so my best guess is that these were ground bees of some sort.  Fascinating stuff.  

Far showier birds were the extremely abundant Vermillion Flycatchers that were all over one area we visited.  However, being that I just posted one a few days ago, I had to go with the Towhee today.  Runner-up was a new (for me) bird, a Cassin's Vireo with a great big caterpillar that it was trying to subdue by beating it on a branch.  

Another blast of a day.  A couple of shots in Extra including a rare, for me, landscape.

Xo
Debbi