Our long spell of hot, dry weather finally came to an end early this week with a cloudy, cooler day and rain that began slowly. About 4:30 the next morning I awoke to the beautiful, welcome sound of heavy, steady, hard rain. It fell for hours, and continued to rain all the next day, slacking up now and then to only a drizzle for a while, then becoming heavy again. It\u2019s the kind of rain we should get in the fall \u2013 a familiar rain, feeling tropical, dark and moody.<\/p>\n
Although the heavy rain had passed through by Wednesday morning, the day began with deeply clouded and gray skies, and a misty rain still falling. It was almost ten before the mist faded away, leaving the air damp and warm, the ground saturated, trees dripping.<\/p>\n
The same dogwood full of red berries, on the edge of a thicket by the roadside, was again attracting several small birds. Most of them were even more difficult to see in the gray, blurry light, but after a few minutes, a flash of black and white wings was the first sign of a brilliantly colored male Rose-breasted Grosbeak that emerged just long enough for me to get a good look, before he slipped back into the foliage \u2013 a big, sturdy songbird with black back, head and face, a large conical bill, white markings in the wings, white belly, and a splotch of deep rose-red on the upper breast.<\/p>\n
At almost the same time, another Rose-breasted Grosbeak flew into a sweet gum tree close beside the dogwood and perched in full view for a longer time \u2013 showing a completely different look. This Rose-breasted Grosbeak was a study in brown, with a face boldly striped in brown and white, white cheeks, and finer, more tawny brown-streaked breast. Its back was darker brown and streaked, with a dull brown tail. While not so flamboyantly colored and eye-catching as the first, this one had a more subtle, varied beauty, in colors made for an autumn day. At first I thought it was a female, but later realized the tawny breast and finer streaks were those of a first-year male. Interesting, and another reminder that what appears to be obvious often is not.<\/p>\n
A female Scarlet Tanager emerged from the dogwood leaves, softly colored in muted shades of yellow and yellow-green. And there was also a thrush of some kind \u2013 it appeared to have no eye ring and a plain gray-brown back, and dark spots very high on the breast and a pale belly. I did not ever get a clear enough look to be sure, but because of the very plain gray face, think it was probably a Gray-cheeked Thrush, and can only wish I had seen it better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our long spell of hot, dry weather finally came to an end early this week with a cloudy, cooler day and rain that began slowly. About 4:30 the next morning I awoke to the beautiful, welcome sound of heavy, steady, hard rain. It fell for hours, and continued to rain all the next day, slacking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions\/1063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}