Winter and Early Spring Birds

I am going to put a bunch of pictures that I have taken throughout the winter and early spring of this year.

This hermit thrush was having a lot of fun swimming on a small creek.

S0044389 — Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus) swimming in a creek

I took these pictures of a bunch of Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus) halfway through April. There were a bunch of these waxwings having fun and enjoying the berries. They didn’t stay in the area for very long. There were around 10 of these lovely birds on the same tree, that would later visit other trees. They didn’t leave many berries…

Later on in the year this Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina) was enjoying some bird food that there was on the floor.

Some other birds that have been around include the Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) and this Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus).

The mockingbird was able to make me feel mocked, I chased it around for a while and still never got a very clear shot. We have quite a few mockingbirds in the area (central Texas). The bird would spend a while on the branch that it is seen on, singing. I was surprised at how many songs he could do. It was just one sound after another. After a little while he would fly directly up, come down and land on the exact same branch and keep singing.

The bird shown underneath that has a pretty bad, unclear picture is a Great-tailed Grackle. If you haven’t seen or heard one of these before, you would also be amazed at how peculiar this bird actually is. It too, like the mockingbird, is able to make a bunch of weird noises. I’m hoping to take more, better pictures of this bird in the future, which shouldn’t be very hard considering how many of these there are around here. I also hope to take a sound recording so that you can listen to them.