Learning About Birds . . . Scarlet Tanager

It has been a while since I have done a Learning about birds post and I certainly haven't been posting much in the way of bird photos lately so I thought this would be an appropriate time to start up this series again.

Scarlet Tanager
- Scarlet Tanagers have been recorded eating over 2,000 gypsy moth caterpillars in an hour.
- They become noisy and swoop around most birds who prey on them, such as Blue Jays and Eastern Screech owls, however they remain still and quiet around Merlins and American Crows.
- A group of tanagers are collectively known as a "season" of tanagers.





My other posts on the Scarlet Tanager.

Lupines Continued

Since people seemed to enjoy the last Lupine shots I'll post these as well. I hope you enjoy.

Lupines:

Flowers

Well, between work and personal life, I haven't been out birding in quite a while and thus haven't posted any new photos. I also have not spent time keeping up on others blogs that I normally read which is something that I miss. Anyway, this last weekend though I had the opportunity to play with a nice macro lens so I spent time around the yard shooting some of the flowers and plants that my wife has planted. She has done a great job making our yard look colorful with all of the planting she has done. A few years back we got some Lupine seeds and planted them and this is the first year that they have bloomed.

Lupines:

Carlos Avery - Wild Flowers

Here are a few more shots of the wild flowers from the other day.

Wild Flowers:

Carlos Avery - Wild Flowers

Well I stopped by Carlos Avery last evening and saw a number of birds at distance but never really got any shots that I was even remotely content to share but the wild flowers are out in force right now so I focused my attentions on them. Here are a few shows that I liked.

Wild Flowers:

Tennessee Warbler

I've been going through more of the photos I took this spring mainly from an organization point of view. I want to make sure that I've tagged all the photos with appropriate keywords and any other pertinent metadata. It seems very easy to fall behind on this task and end up with thousands of photos that I have no way of searching in the future. During the process of tagging my photos I came across these photos of a Tennessee Warbler that I took in the parking lot at work. None of the photos are tremendous, but I liked the setting of the bird in the flowering tree. Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

Tennessee Warbler:

Scarlet Tanager

Even though I haven't gotten out very much as of late, I've still had some good fortune with a few very nice yard birds. The Indigo Bunting still shows himself periodically and over the weekend we had multiple sightings of this Scarlet Tanger. This is just one fantastic bird!

Scarlet Tanager:

House Finches

Well, the spring fling is over and the we're down to mostly those birds that will be here for the remainder of the summer. This scruffy little House Finch hangs outside my office window almost every day. He's so close to my window I just have to photograph him!

House Finch:

Indigo Bunting

I was at friends cabin this weekend and there were quite a few Indigo Bunting flitting about so I grabbed my camera and got this sequence which I thought was pretty fun. I wish the last photo had been more in focus, but you can't have everything can you?

Here one moment, and gone the next!