That or start feeding them diet corn.

We had a chat. They've decided that we'll hold Zumba classes here. Anyone else have fat turkeys? Send them to my house. I'll provide the diet corn snacks and dance floor.

Anyone know which bird this is? I took these yesterday through the kitchen window, so the quality isn't very good. I thought at first it was a Black-headed Grosbeak, but I think I'm wrong about that. It was eating sunflower seeds.

I've decided that the bird above is a female Black-headed Grosbeak, because the male showed up and I was able to get some lousy pictures of him, too! These are birds I hadn't seen before!

Cool! I was just looking to ID the 1st ones & came up with nothing. I'm glad you found it!

I could still be wrong about what I think is a female Black-headed Grosbeak, but it's probably correct. The only pictures I could find weren't an exact match. The yellow line above the eyes was white in other pictures. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Both the male and female sit on the eggs and raise the babies, so that could explain why I haven't seen them together. Or, they aren't the same bird.

I often find one has to check several if not more resources to ID birds. They can vary by particular region. part of the state, molting or not, season affects coloration.... so many factors. My favorite site is
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/g... if you scroll down they have multiple photos of males, females, juveniles as well as birds that "look like" that you can check.

Then I found these sites that might be useful to you Natalie
http://www.idahobirds.net
http://pinpointcompany.us/nort...

And I have this book for my area written by the same guy & have found it an invaluable tool. You might want to get the one for Idaho. Try Ebay & see if you can pick it up cheap.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...
I find it real handy for when you're just sitting relaxing, you can just thumb through it & you end up familiarizing yourself with all the birds you might see. Then when you see something, you tend to remember you saw it in the book or even remember what it actually is just from thumbing through the book. What I like best, is it's divided into colors so it's real easy to look for an ID based on color.

I'd say it is a black-headed grosbeak. We get them at our house once in a blue moon.

By golly, you can learn something every day -- I've always called these guys evening grosbeaks but they are in fact black headed grosbeaks. The evening ones have a yellow breast and different head markings. Now, I'm wondering if I have seen both and just never differentiated them from each other. Huh...

Cool looking birds Natalie.

1300 miles apart. Bush Stone-curlews in my yard, Macleay Island and my brother's at Brampton Beach in the north.



The northern birds have more warm brown on their faces.

Neat bird, nice pics.

Interesting pictures, Glen


This is a time lapse video I made of birds and the squirrel in the yard. This is a couple years old but it could have been taken at any time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Kelli, how clever and creative.
I enjoyed that very much. I had never thought of doing that.

Thank you

Love those birds, Glen! Great eyes!

Kelli, I loved your video!! Made me miss the bluejays! We had one in Utah that would take peanuts out of our hand when we were sitting on the patio. He showed up for three years in a row, and I'm thinking it had to be the same one, because we had several in the yard, but one always came right up to us and would look for peanuts every year. It was never like he had to get used to us. He acted like he knew it was safe to do it. The first year though, it took him a week to get up the nerve to do it. After that, he was in our face!

Natalie, I have never ridden a horse but I like your quote. I fantasize about the Western lifestyle, though I'm sure I've romanticized it a lot.

Kelli, you really need to ride a horse, or just hang out with one for a while!

Love the video.

Thanks HollyAnn.


In case anyone is wondering about the words in the middle of the song in the video, the guy wants an Ichiro bobblehead. Ichiro is a baseball player and he was hugely popular when he played for Seattle. There would be huge crowds when they would give away Ichiro bobbleheads at the stadium. A bobblehead is a plastic figure whose oversized head is on a spring and it bobbles around. Bobbleheads are popular with sports fans.