Sunday, May 11, 2014

western tanager ~ 05/11/14 ~ at home

Myrtaceae

On Saturday, Andy spotted an all-yellow bird in the neighbor's kiwi Christmas tree from our 3rd floor window and described it to me.  He said it looked like a canary with a yellow head and some coloring on the wing, but not all black.  Besides Townsend's warblers over the winter, we rarely get bright yellow birds on this side of town.  So, I queried a friend less than 2 miles away on the ocean side of the Peninsula since she sees yellow birds regularly around her home.  She's also noticed a couple atypical birds with orange heads hanging around.  We finally got a picture of it Sunday after several glimpses of it and a mate as they flew around from the neighbor's tree to the tree tops in the park and back again.  We went running from room to room, too, hoping to see them through one of the windows.  I think they'd be impossible to see from the ground.  I went from guessing it was someone's lost pet parakeet to a female hooded oriole.  Ha!  Nope.  Depending on the angle, that orange crown is not always visible, which makes distinguishing male from female difficult at times.  I wonder how long they'll hang around?  They really seemed to like picking at the red blooms that look very much like bottle brush.