If You’re Not Interested in Yard Work

Nothing very exciting this weekend, unless you’re a masochist and like yardwork, so I’ll stick with Saturday’s pictures for my last post of the weekend.

This is the first time I’ve ever managed to get a picture of a Western Tanager
male Red Crossbill.

and here’s yet another yellow flower that I enjoyed playing around with:

yellow flower

5 thoughts on “If You’re Not Interested in Yard Work”

  1. Yard work? Not if there is any other choice! The tanager is beautiful. I’ve never seen one, but I live in eastern Ohio. Here we have a lot of cardinals, blue jays, purple finches, mourning doves, woodpeckers, American goldfinches, and others that I can’t name without consulting a bird book. But they all come to my backyard feeder, where my indoor cat (a longhair tortoise shell) watches with her face near the glass.

  2. I’ve never seen a Tanager of any kind or sex other than in pictures. Until the real thing comes along, that’ll have to do.

  3. Hi Ron,

    The first thing I thought (besides, “wow, that’s nice”) when I saw Loren’s picture is, “Lucky!”

    We have Scarlet Tanagers around where I live but they are either a bit secretive or live far above eye level as I only recall seeing two in my lifetime. I’ve tried to learn the song figuring that I’m more likely to hear one first and it will get me looking and paying attention if I hear it. Unfortunately for me, they don’t seem to have a particularly distinctive call. At least not to my ear.

  4. On September 22, 2008 I received the following message:

    While conducting a search for photos of Western Tanagers, I came across your photo, taken September 3, 2007. I just wanted to let you know that the bird isn’t a Western Tanager. It’s actually a young male Red Crossbill. I understand you’re more of a philosopher than an ornithologist, but I thought you might appreciate the information.”

    While it doesn’t look like the Red Crossbill in my bird identification book, the small print also notes that they may also look yellowish orange. so that may. Since I’ve never seen another Red Crossbill or Tanager, for that matter, I’m assuming that his identification is the correct one.

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