Birds in the back yard

[Dotch]

Every night when I feed the bottle lamb, these two are perched on the extension cord. They're making progress on a nest already.

[LPS]

Those darn barn swallows are pretty birds but as a kid I hated them diving at me when at my Grandmas.  lol  Well we have a male oriole at the hummer feeder yesterday but no hummers yet.

[Dotch]

I've always had a soft spot for barn swallows. Watching them almost effortlessly sweep the lawn and pasture for insects can be almost mesmerizing. Sure, their nests can be messy but they eat a lot of bugs especially flies. They get a pass on the mess as long as they limit their nesting to the barns and granary. 

[roony]

I like to watch the barn swallow dive at cats.

[Jerkbiat]

Those darn barn swallows are pretty birds but as a kid I hated them diving at me when at my Grandmas.  lol  Well we have a male oriole at the hummer feeder yesterday but no hummers yet.

I could hear an Oriole this morning when I went out to leave for work. I will get the jelly out today when we get home.

[LPS]

The swallows were in my Grandmas car port nesting between the rafters.  We had to walk through there to get in the house.  They dive bombed the heck out of us kids.  Was pretty funny now that I look back on it. 

[glenn57]

  the dive bombing experts where the purple martins..... mom and dad had a bunch.....holy sheet.........

[Dotch]

I saw Barry's faves, the cowbirds, were back over the weekend.

Letting Poppy out at lunchtime when the Mrs. is working is OK but I cuss when I have to feed the bottle lamb. Just as I was starting to get the bottle ready, I spied an odd looking bird with reddish blotches on it. At first I thought it had caught glenn's rash but after looking at the bird longer, I could rule out a cardinal or house finch. Very tanager-esque, but lacking the dark wings of the scarlet tanager & more olive colored between the red blotches. Out of its normal range but it appeared to be a young molting male summer tanager. Others have been seen in MN over the past 5 years. It went from feeder to feeder & settled on grape jelly. A definite first & doubtful I'll see one here again.

My attempts to photograph it were unrewarding. Attached photo from Cornell Lab looks very similar although the one I saw was probably farther along in the molting process. The one here at the ranch was definitely redder.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Summer_Tanager/id 

[LPS]

Very cool bird.  We have bright yellow goldfinches now.  Man what a difference.  Oh ya it was in the bird feeder so I say it is on topic.  I got pine squirrel number 8 today.  That is way above the normal 3 or so that we usually get.  I threw it by the fox den when the dogs weren't watching.  At least I don't think they saw what I was doing.