Late on a warm, sunny, beautiful fall morning \u2013 blue sky covered loosely with a quilt of soft white clouds \u2013 a Yellow-billed Cuckoo was quietly feeding in the leafy shadows of one of many trees in a dense thicket of privet, vines, and other shrubs and weeds. I had stopped to check out the area because it\u2019s often a good spot for birds. A large dogwood tree on the edge of the thicket is full of red berries. The Cuckoo was further back among the leaves of an elm, and at first I could only see a part of its distinctive velvet-brown head and back, and creamy white throat. But as I watched, it gradually moved enough into the open to see a full view, even the subtle, pale-rufous color in the folded wings, the down-curved bill, yellow on the lower part, and the long tail, with big, dramatic white spots on the dark under side.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the thicket, in shrubs near the ground, a Swainson\u2019s Thrush emerged just long enough to see its olive-brown back and head, buffy face, pale eye-ring and spotted chest.<\/p>\n
These two were the only migrant birds I found this morning, but other birds seemed much more active than in a while, so that the neighborhood felt more lively, with an energy in the air. A Pine Warbler sang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late on a warm, sunny, beautiful fall morning \u2013 blue sky covered loosely with a quilt of soft white clouds \u2013 a Yellow-billed Cuckoo was quietly feeding in the leafy shadows of one of many trees in a dense thicket of privet, vines, and other shrubs and weeds. I had stopped to check out the […]<\/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\/1749"}],"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=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1752,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions\/1752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}