Clay-colored Thrushes, Granddaughters (and other of life's beauties)

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Though no longer a "robin," this  Clay-colored Thrush

 still looks like one.  Ignore that green bill, delicate 

coloring, and lack of eyering. In black and white or sepia,
you'd say "American Robin."

I've done it again, though I made a New Year's Resolution not to--let two whole weeks pass since my last post.

I really wanted to do better this year as far as frequency of posts goes.  Yes, there are excuses:  we spent a few days visiting grandchildren, and we've had a week since of gray drizzle, even  temperatures in the 40's and 50's--but I still resolve to do better by my blog and birds!

Enough of the excuses:  here's the yard news for my delinquent two weeks.

Look closely and you'll see the little red berries this
frugivorous bird is foraging for in the leaf litter under
a Brazilian Pepper tree.

The Clay-colored Thrush is making itself at home in the yard, eating berries from the Brazilian Pepper tree in the neighbor's yard and the fiddlewood berries in ours.  It likes to hang out in the leaf litter along the driveway because of the little red berries that have fallen among the leaves.  I suspect there are actually two of the thrushes, though I can't quite catch them together.  A couple of days ago one flew into an ash tree and then another flew to the fiddlewood.  But when I looked back at the ash, the first was gone.

Until a few years ago, Clay-colored Thrushes were Clay-colored "Robins."   I imagine the reason the name changed is that even our American Robin is not a true robin.  The red-breasted bird was called "robin" by English settlers in America after the familiar red-breasted robin of England, even though the American version is clearly a thrush, looking much more like Europe's  Common Blackbird or Song Thrush than a true robin.

A European Robin perches on a
spade in Peter Rabbit's garden.

I was delighted to see the European version of a Robin when I visited England and Scotland  a few years ago.  A cheerful little bird in appearance as well as song, it reminded me of illustrations in my favorite children's books. When a robin perched on the window sill at Beatrix Potter's home, I was transported back in imagination to Peter Rabbit's garden. (The trip to England and Scotland was my life's dream vacation not only because of the children's books I loved, but also because I had taught English Literature for several decades before I retired.)

American Robins are so beloved of Americans that I doubt the American Ornithologists' Union (in their official checklist of birds)  would ever change the name, but the rarer tropical Clay-colored Thrush, White-throated Thrush,  and Rufous-backed Thrush all had name-changes a few years ago, dropping the misleading "robin" part of their names for the scientifically accurate "thrush."  These are all tropical birds of Mexico and Central America; in fact, the Clay-colored Thrush is the national bird of Costa Rica. In the 90's the Clay-colored version of what we called "robin" started showing up more often north of the Mexican/US border (that's when we had our first visitor) and even nested in a few parks and refuges in the Rio GrandeValley, though not in our yard.  It's one of those birds that seem to show up where the birders are--which makes me pretty sure they have been more common than we suspect. I don't think they recognize human borders.   It's just not an accident that they hang out in the same parks where birders hang out.  I think they are in lots of yards when no one is looking.

Last week I went with a friend to Estero Llano Grande park, about twenty minutes west of Harlingen in Weslaco, Texas, to see a White-throated Thrush that is attracting birders who want to tick this tropical thrush off their life lists.  I had seen them in Belize and Mexico but this was my first in the US.  It was easy to spot--we just looked for the other birders gathered under the tree where it was feeding.

The White-throated Thrush is darker and grayer than the Clay-colored, looking a little more like an American Robin to me.  I really love the coloring of the Clay-colored Thrush.  Its delicate brown is unique but reminds me somewhat of the shades of a female Northern Cardinal or Pyrruloxia.  The latter two birds seem to be always in the vicinity of the thrush in our yard. Of course, the yard is not large, but I have been seeing these two species, along with the light brown Curve-billed Thrasher, under the neighbor's Brazilian Pepper tree and along our driveway. It's as if someone said, "Okay, all you light brown birds, line up over here!"

A Pyrrhuloxia (female) hides in a grapefruit tree

A female Northern Cardinal's delicate coloring
is to me even more beautiful than its bright mate's.

And while I'm thinking of beautiful pale-colored birds (nothing plain to me about these guys, despite the bad rap brown or gray sometimes gets), I'll put forth the White-tipped Dove, a pale gray-brown dove with a pink iridescent sheen delicately coloring its forehead and throat. Its rolling, liquid way of walking out of the shadows and across the drive is really lovely. (I also love its huoo-huoo call, sounding  as if someone were blowing over the top of a soft drink bottle.)

White-tipped Dove

Finally, the best bird I've seen in the last two weeks was not in the yard at all.  It was in the Art Show at my granddaughter's school.  For her submission to the show, Sadie drew an Indigo Bunting that she had seen in her yard last spring.

So one of my excuses for not reporting on the yard activities for a couple of weeks is valid.  Even better than watching birds is being with our grandchildren: Sadie, her look-alike baby sister Jacey, and her three older brothers drew us away from the yard and up to their home for a few days.  A year ago I posted a picture of the baby who had interrupted first-week-of-the-year birding last year.  See how much she's grown (and how much she loved her first birthday cake) in the photo below.  I'm always ready to leave the banks of the Arroyo if I can see such beauty elsewhere.  I don't even have to use binoculars!

From brown birds to red-headed granddaughters, it's been a good two weeks.  Today the sun came out for the first time in a week.  Its slanting  rays just before sunset  tinted the banks of the Arroyo Colorado a golden brown.  Life is good.  

Post script (Monday):  Visiting our daughter's family requires us to drive north about six hours, but at least we are still in Texas where it is reasonably warm.  To visit our other two beautiful twin granddaughters, we drive considerably further to Missouri where winter weather can bring cold and snow.  Here's a photo I received today of their sledding fun over the weekend.  They, too, are lovely enough to tempt us out of our south Texas  yard for a while. At their house over Christmas holidays we watched American Robins bathe in melted snow.  Now after a week of Missouri temperatures in single digits, maybe those robins are winging their way to the Rio Grande Valley to join their Clay-colored cousins.  I wish our granddaughters could also migrate here for a visit. 

Hurricane Alex, Stay Away from My Nest!

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This morning, as the first squall from approaching Hurricane Alex came through our yard, rain beating across the surface of  the arroyo and wind whistling at the windows, I watched a baby mockingbird, fresh out of its nest in the cenizo shrub, try to hold on to a branch as the wind whipped it to and fro.  A parent hovered close by.  I'm hoping the storm will not destroy nests and nestlings.  I'm hoping it won't destroy my own nest!

A couple of weeks ago I posted a sort of "state of the yard" piece, surveying the nesting activity around the house that week and comparing some of the birds to a restless wren questing for the perfect nest in a poem by Emily Dickinson (see "for every Bird a Nest").  My daughter Lori left a comment for me saying it reminded her of her favorite children's book, The Best Nest, by P.D. Eastman.

Now, Lori knows a lot about children and books, being both a teacher and a wonderful mother of five (my beautiful grandchildren who range in age from six months to fourteen years, birders all).  She pointed out that the mother bird of the book, who is unhappy with her nest,  learns in the end that it is not the location of the nest that matters, but the family in it. A good lesson for all of us, my wise daughter says.

I'd have to agree with her. She and her brother made our nest a very happy one before they fledged about twenty years ago.  We now visit their nests as often as we can (traveling to central Texas and Missouri), and in between those visits we continue to watch the  nests outside our own. So I guess you can say we don't suffer from "empty nest syndrome"--we've found a great way to take up our time, yard-watching!

Most of the backyard nesting this month has turned out well.  Bronzed Cowbirds still terrorize the neighborhood but even those parasitizing pests haven't prevented the baby boom.  Unwanted guests, they are nonetheless fascinating (and yes, beautiful) to watch.  If you had seen this guy with his ruffled mane and piercing red eye survey the sorghum field across the road, I think you'd be as stunned by his beauty as I was.

It's been a week of increase in the yard:   we have newly-fledged Green Jays eating from our feeders along with their parents,

Carolina Wrens flittering and singing everywhere,

and a family of Eastern Screech-owls screeching and trilling their strange songs as they perch in trees and on the outside stair railings at night.

I'm not sure where the little owls' nest was this year.  For years they chose a nest box in our yard, peeking out at us from the hole as we drove in the driveway.  But for the last two summers bees have taken up residence as soon as the owl family fledged--so we had to take the box down and we left it down this year. 

Brown-crested Flycatchers are very busy feeding chicks in their woodpecker-hole-nest-cavity nest in the dead cottonwood stump (they finally made the decision for the location of their second nest).  I love to hear their singing as they carry the insects to the hungry babies.  (Read "Let's Do Lunch" for a description of their first nest and "for every Bird a Nest" for photos of their search for this one.)

Here's a new nest and its inhabitant:  a White-winged Dove sitting on eggs in a flimsy nest in the small Brasil tree at the end of the driveway.  Isn't that blue-circled eye amazing?  I took this picture quickly as she was definitely eying me and my camera, even though I wasn't as close to her as my zoom lens makes it look.  I love to hear the incessant "who cooks for you?" queries of these beautiful doves. 

I discovered a very cleverly-placed nest last week in an unusual place: snuggled in the brain cavity of a cow's skull was a nest with several baby Black-crested Titmice!  Now if you are wondering where in the world the titmice would find such a nest site, remember this is Texas where citizens use dead animal heads as decor.  The skull, once bleached white in the Texas sun out in a Texas cow pasture, is now gracing (?) the wall of a neighbor's storage shed, clearly visible from our deck and an apparently enticing place for the titmouse family.

I've already mentioned the strange nesting habits of Black-crested Titmice in previous years when they nested inside the metal railings of our boat trailer and inside the metal arm of a satellite dish. This may just be the strangest place for a nest yet--though to Mrs. Titmouse it may be "The Best Nest" ever!  In P.D. Eastman's  The Best Nest,  the Wrens think they've found a great nest, a boot, until the foot it belongs to reclaims it.  That reminds me of the time one of my neighbors put on a pair of khaki pants he had hung to dry on the porch railing.  When he reached his hand in the pocket, he found a Carolina Wren's nest!




Kiskadees may have a second brood in their large spherical nest.  In this photo, you can clearly see the side entrance to the nest.  

I've seen only one more bird feeding a cowbird chick, a Northern Cardinal.  I don't know if it also raised cardinals. I hope so.  I'm just glad to see the pair of cardinals doing okay.  The female is one we saw at the feeders in the spring with a badly torn (or deformed) crest.  I didn't post this horrible photo then because I was afraid the bird had been attacked by one of the neighborhood cats and feared that it would not survive. Now the photo just reminds me of how resilient nature can be. That's something I want to hold on to with a hurricane bearing down on us so early in hurricane season and with oil still gushing in the gulf.   The bird is still strange looking, but she is seemingly healthy and has raised a brood of chicks.  Her image no longer horrifies me but gives me hope.

The Altamira Orioles have not returned to their nest, but I did hear them singing a few days ago.  I still have hopes that they will decide to use the beautifully constructed pendulous nest that they built and abandoned last March. 

Quick!  Is this an Altamira or a Hooded Oriole?  

You're right--it's the smaller but similar Hooded Oriole.  Hooded Orioles are still eating daily from the hummingbird nectar feeders and hanging out in the Washingtonian Palms.  I can't see their nests, but there appears to be one in a tree in the backyard and one in the front. 

I'm still frustrated that I can't find a Buff-bellied Hummingbird's nest.  I'm fairly certain there are new baby hummers among those at our feeders.  These are our resident hummers, quite beautiful birds. I like the photo above because the eponymous buff-colored belly shows clearly above those tiny feet.

Other birds whose numbers have increased greatly in the last two weeks are the Cave Swallows that nest under the roof of a neighbor's boat lift and the Purple Martins that live in another neighbor's martin house.  In this photo the young martin is the one with the grayish throat.



As I type this post, I am watching the Weather Channel.  We're playing that guessing game that people who live in hurricane land have to play.  Should we stay or should we leave?  Will the storm come straight up the arroyo  and the eye come over our house (as Hurricane Dolly did two years ago), or will we be lucky and get mostly just much-needed rain?  I hate to think that the storm will follow Dolly's path.  That storm was in August, past nesting time for the herons and spoonbills and pelicans on Green Island at the mouth of the Arroyo. This one, I'm reminded by the baby mockingbird clutching the cenizo shrub next to its nest, is early in the season when birds are still nesting.   Even the Best Nest doesn't offer protection when the very trees are in danger.

 Update on the storm:  So far, luck is with us.  The latest Tropical Update puts us at the top edge of the cone of danger in the hurricane's path instead of right in the middle as we were a few hours ago and it's saying the storm may be only a category one hurricane.

I think we'll be lucky.  And so will that little mockingbird whose parents built the Best Nest there in the cenizo bush.

Topnotch Topknots

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There is not a jauntier little bird than the Black-crested Titmouse. Crests always tidy, never having a "bad-hair day," they look especially bright-eyed and well-groomed.  Their black eyes looking like shiny buttons,  they dart quickly to the feeders, grab a morsel, and  fly quickly away to eat the black sunflower seed in a nearby tree.  Grasping the seed with tiny feet against the branch, they peck determinedly once or twice, deftly cracking the shell, and eating it posthaste.

We have a pair this year that apparently have chosen to nest in a dead cottonwood tree, a more conventional nesting cavity  than some they have had in the past.  One summer they raised two broods inside the metal railing on a boat trailer parked at the side of our yard.  It was a hot summer (of course) and I feared the metal pipe would be too hot--or within reach of marauding stray cats, but baby titmice fledged successfully both times.  Another summer they built a nest inside the metal arm of a large satellite disk about five feet off the ground.  Every time the dish moved when we changed channels (this was before  Dish Network satellites when we had one of those big awkward moving dishes), the arm would move too--but that didn't bother the birds either! 
Among my favorite summer days are those when just-fledged titmice are noisily following their parents around the yard.

I finally got a photograph of a Pyrrhuloxia at the feeder on the edge of the house.  A pair have been coming to the second floor feeder for the last couple of days along with several Northern Cardinals.  I like to see the two species together.  Superficially the Pyrrhuloxia looks like a female cardinal, but side by side there's  quite a difference.  I  think the Pyrrhuloxia looks like a caricature  of a Cardinal with its big yellow beak and exaggerated crest.  Looking at it makes me smile--which is why I have been trying to get a photo.  (Typically  it eats seed sprinkled on the ground at the end of the driveway,  too far away from the deck to get a clear photo, and it usually flies away when I walk outside with my camera.  So I was happy to have the pair start coming to the window.)

The female Cardinal in this photo demonstrates the strength of her beak:  those are bits of a just-crushed sunflower seed flying around the lower mandible.  At first when I looked at the photo, I thought there was something wrong with the beak, but I examined the photos taken just before and just after that one was, and realized those were splinters of the seed heart and shell that a split-second before had been shattered by that beak so well-adapted to her diet. 


Here's a close-up. Can't you just hear the crack of that seed exploding? 




I began this post with a Black-crested Titmouse; I'll end with a much larger crested bird:  the Crested Caracara (Northern Caracara) that posed in a mesquite tree while we were boating along the river yesterday.  People around here call them the "Mexican Eagle," but they are actually falcons.  When I see one of these on the ground, there's usually something dead nearby.  They are carrion-eaters like vultures (and often hang around with them, especially Black Vultures), but they also eat living snakes,  lizards, turtles, etc.

I like to see Caracaras flying.  Something about the way they fly, very purposefully, reminds me of kamikazes. They look helmeted to me, and other falcons do, too--- an impression I have that, it occurs to me as I write, others may not have.  But even from too far away to see clearly, I can spot these large crested birds and know just what they are.

Maybe it's the crest.  Whatever it is, these four birds--from the dapper little Black-crested Titmouse -- to the seed-cracking Cardinals and Pyrrhuloxias -- to the imposing Crested Caracara--are among my favorite yard birds. Yesterday was  a topnotch day for watching topknots.