Friday, August 16, 2013

Yellow Breasted Chat , "skedaddle day"

It was "skedaddle day" when yesterday's birds all left overnight, obviously not much to see today. But in spite of that kind of day, it was one great bird ( or great birds for Kathy) that made my workday another good day.

Its been at least a year since I saw Yellow-breasted Chat ( maybe winter of 2012) , but just before my lunch hour started I decided to go up to Lookout Hill. There at the top of the Maryland Monument staircase, I ran into Kathy Toomey.While we were "chatting"  :)>  I spotted a bird fly into the fruited Paper Mulberry Tree. It was a YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT  right out in the open ! It proceeded to the canopy of the tree, picking At the delectable fruits.There it stayed for 7 minutes I estimated before it flew to a nearby sycamore tree  momentarily then over the brushy slope towards the south edge of Butterfly Meadow where we lost track of it.For this bird's furtive character , it was an eternity watching great looks of this bird. Kathy and I considered ourselves very lucky.

Also of note , from the previous post, the ORANGE ( or RED) BISHOP was feeding on grass seeds that it weighed down next to the puddle that you can see in my cell phone bad video shot.

Kathy reported BLUE-WINGED WARBLER right at the top of the Maryland Monument stairs.. ( before I arrived and YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO near the bottom of the Lookout Hill stairs ( facing the cemetery)

--KB