He was bouncing around the scrub on the high dirt road in my canyon. Honestly, it blew my mind.
Thirty years here, the first one I have ever seen in the Santa Margarita River valley. And wouldn't you know, I left my camera at the shop.
Had to borrow this picture from the internet. But a dead ringer. Very exciting. Gorgeous bird. Let me know if you other Fallbrookians ever see them around, will you?
2 comments:
Robert, I'm not a birder like you, so you'll have to take that into account. Every year in early summer we see a group of beautiful yellow, black and orange birds hanging around our bottlebrush trees. They're only around for a week or two. They're very flighty - they don't sit still for long in any spot. We've always called them orioles and I've never bothered to try and get a picture of them (flighty, again) for better identification. They could be your tanager, or they could be one of a few varieties of orioles. We saw a couple only a week ago here in the hills above Gird Road.
The red orange head is the key. You may in fact have western tanagers although they are rather rare here or it may have been a hooded or bullock's oriole, which can get a little orangey.
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