Nature Notes: Recent Birds

Here are some new-to-us birds we’ve seen lately.

I snapped this photo in the back yard. “It looks like a catbird, but brown,” I mused.

My ten-year-old came to look at the picture. “It’s a yellow-billed cuckoo!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I can tell from the spots on the tail!”

A yellow-billed cuckoo. Never seen one in my life — at least, not that I noticed. Yet thanks to our nature study, I saw this one. And thanks to her habit of poring over the bird book admiringly, Older Daughter recognized it. Yellow-billed cuckoos eat tent caterpillars, so we welcome them.

This is either an immature rose-breasted grosbeak outgrowing his protective coloration, or a mature one fading to his fall plumage. I only just learned from Birds and Blooms that they do that.

Here’s a post with a view of a mature one, along with a female.

This next one is, I think, a prothonotary warbler. It looks like a goldfinch, but it has no wing bars.

Dreadful picture. I don’t know why it’s so blurry.

The flickers are back, and we’re seeing lots of hawks as usual. Yesterday the girls were convinced that they saw a number of hawks soaring together — a “kettle” of hawks, we’ve learned is the correct term. They flock together to migrate.

Here is some art work the girls have produced in the bird area.