Wow! What an amazing day on the birdcam. Mourning doves, chipping sparrows, great-tailed grackle, bronzed cowbird… and all of them upstaged by not one, but two gorgeous blue birds, with one of them being a new species for the game.
vanilla got the fun started with this shot of the indigo bunting at 10:45 a.m.:
She also got this lovely shot at 10:48:
Notice, by the way, that indigo bunting field mark: the blue is darker on the head than on the rest of the body. That’s going to be important later on.
At 11:04, rafa got this shot of a blue bird feeding on the ground. Another shot of that gorgeous indigo bunting, right? Or is it?
Here’s another shot by rafa 10 seconds later:
We’ve zoomed in some, and have a better view of the head, which certainly seems to be a lighter, rather than a darker, shade than the rest of the body. And what about that beak? It’s on the large size for a bunting, don’t you think?
Now check out this shot taken by rafa five seconds later. That sure looks like a chestnut stripe on the bird’s wing:
Finally, check out this shot, also by rafa:
That’s no bunting beak. Ladies and gentleman, we have blue grosbeak!
The fun wasn’t over. Between 12:04 and 12:35, loughman1 and rafa got a great series of shots of a whole flock of indigo buntings feeding in the grass. Here’s a shot by loughman1:
I love the way the bunting in the lower right is craning his neck to reach a tasty seed. Notice that we’ve got a female bunting on the righthand edge of the shot, too.
Here’s another cool shot by loughman1:
I almost think that could be a grosbeak, rather than a bunting, at the upper left. It certainly looks like a different shade of blue than the male bunting hanging out next to that female at the bottom. But after examining it closely, I’m really not sure.
This shot, taken by budgieface at 12:53, is currently identified as blue grosbeak. I think the ID is probably wrong, though, and that this is actually an indigo bunting:
Finally, I really love this shot of what I believe is the grosbeak, taken by rafa at 2:45:
Does it look to you like it has something in its beak (besides its ginormous beak, I mean)? Nesting material, maybe?
Congratulations to everyone who participated, and congratulations to CONE Welder itself for getting its 75th species.
Update: Oops. I now realize that some shots were taken yesterday, April 14, of the blue grosbeak. So it wasn’t new today; it was new yesterday.