Fall Feasting
Last week I shared some of my pictures of birds eating the seeds that have matured over the summer. The same thing is true for berries – they ripen in the fall and the birds go after them with gusto. Of course seeds and berries are not the only things birds eat so here’s a look at a variety of foods birds fill up on during the fall.
Let’s start with a Great Blue Heron with a big catfish it just caught. After catching the fish it slowly made its way to the bank of the pond and then gobbled it down. I’m guessing that if it tried to eat the fish in the middle of the pond and dropped it the fish could have darted away easily. On the bank, a dropped fish would have landed on the ground and couldn’t have escaped quite so quickly.
How about eating a spider (that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her)? Many small songbirds, including warblers, eat a steady diet of insects to provide them the protein they need to survive. This Blackpoll Warbler (note the orange feet) has a nice juicy spider in its mouth. I wonder how the legs taste?
Berries are good, too. I wish I knew my bushes better but this one down in Montrose produced lots of white berries that attracted many vireos and other birds.
More recently down at Montrose we spotted small groups of House Finch flying into these red-berry trees. I love it when the bird’s coloration matches the vegetation!
Cedar Waxwings also travel together in small groups and we found about six of them feasting on the seeds produced in a nearby cedar pine tree. They just gobbled them up! Note in the first picture the tips of the tail feathers are yellow – this is the normal color. Look at the bird in the background in the second picture and see that its tail feathers are orange/red. This is not normal and comes when a bird feeds on a recently (1960s) introduced Honeysuckle tree.
Well all this talk of food has got me hungry – time for breakfast!
Stay Safe. Go Birding. Take Pics. Share Here. Repeat.
Mike
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