Wednesday, July 20, 2011

More bird bath and a backyard visitor

If you're sick of seeing pictures of my backyard birds, skip this post!  It continues to be ridiculously hot, so tons of birds are visiting the bird bath for a drink and to cool down.

I think these are two juvenile house finches:
I loved this angle, with their shadows:
Later, a mourning dove arrived:
Then things got a bit more crowded:
By chance, I caught this robin on the ground, thinking about coming up:
He did, displacing the mourning dove:
The record for birds we've seen on the bath at once is four (tied many times -- maybe someday we'll hit five!):
The robins aren't always the best sharers (hmmm... sounds like my greys):
But the house finch was undaunted and flew around to the other side of the bath, away from that particular robin:
The goldfinch are notoriously hard for me to photograph as they spook when they see movement in the house, but this appears to be a juvenile, so perhaps he isn't as careful as the adults.
Later in the evening, the greys were in the kitchen when they simultaneously let out their alarm call and flew as quickly as they could into the living room.  I looked outside, but couldn't see anything, so I reassured them all was safe and brought them back to the kitchen.  They then alarm-called again and flew off.  I could finally see why: my neighbor's dog had gotten into our fenced backyard!
They must have caught a glimpse of him and he was behind the shed when I looked for whatever had scared them.

I talked with my neighbor and she said he is a notorious escape artist.  Apparently he had been in our backyard last week sometime -- they can't figure out how he's getting in as the fence appears to be secure.  He's a rescue and they think he honed his escape skills as a puppy when he was allowed to roam free.

Luckily, no harm done, and he made it back home.  I just have to hope he didn't leave any deposits in our yard when Thomas mows the lawn next.

1 comment:

phonelady said...

Oh I do know about those yard bombs LOL !!! my husband hated that when we had our house . I had a neighbor notorious for letting their dog roam loose . Love the bird bath pics keep them coming .