Voyla here: I enjoyed Matt's report of the hummingbird enjoying his spray of
water. One time when my husband was spraying with his thumb pushing on the end
of the hose, some of the water was curling up over his thumb and a rufous
hummingbird sat on his thumb and took a bath.
Sent from my iPad
On Jun 27, 2015, at 10:05 PM, FreeLists Mailing List Manager
<ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
umpquabirds Digest Sat, 27 Jun 2015 Volume: 02 Issue: 143
In This Issue:
[Umpqua Birds] Some items of interest today
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Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2015 19:41:24 -0700
Subject: [Umpqua Birds] Some items of interest today
From: Matthew G Hunter <matthewghunter@xxxxxxxxx>
FORD'S POND
I poked around the SE quarter of Ford's Pond early this morning. A male
TRICOLORED BLACKBIRD was singing from some willows along the S end of the E
side. Took some photos and video. WOOD DUCKS and CINNAMON TEAL are
increasing there with a dozen present each. Two male BLUE-WINGED TEAL and
one male GREEN-WINGED TEAL also there.
REUSTLE WINERY
At about 10:00, when they opened, I listened a while for the Red-eyed Vireo
that was found there in early June. Didn't hear or see it. I did find
something, however, that I had never seen before: NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED
SWALLOWS (NRWS) nesting in an artificial structure. According to the online
Birds of North America, they do occasionally use artificial structures, but
I don't think I've ever seen it before. At the winery they have two
"permanently parked" refrigeration truck trailers (or something like that),
near the handicapped entrance to the tasting room, east side of the
compound. I first saw a male and female NRWS circling around one end of one
of these trailers: male showing fluffed undertail coverts and the female
carrying a short piece of coarse grass (otherwise they look identical to
us). As I watched, the female eventually flew underneath the front of the
trailer, which was about 3-4 feet above the ground, and a couple seconds
later came out without her straw. She did this several times. Eventually I
looked underneath the trailer to see where it was they were building a
nest. It was a horizontal crevice into part of the front hookup/carriage
structure of the trailer.
HOT AT HOME
We don't have much heat defense in our little shoe box, so this late
afternoon, I'd had enough and went outside and sprayed my roof for a little
while with the hose. While I was doing that, an ANNA'S HUMMINGBIRD perched
in an adjacent bigleaf maple tree, appreciated some of my wayward sprays.
It fluttered around in my spray and seemed to drink or rub the drops on the
limbs and leaves. I got back to my business and the hummer began following
my sprayed water around high above the roof. That brought a smile to my
face.
My computer doesn't seem to be working well in this heat. I'll have to
share photos/video another time....
Matt
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End of umpquabirds Digest V2 #143
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