As I was cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast this morning, I stopped to watch through the kitchen window as several birds came to our small back deck. A Tufted Titmouse, a bright red Northern Cardinal, a Carolina Wren \u2013 and three Yellow-rumped Warblers. They checked out the corners and crevices of the deck flooring, rails, edges around the screened porch and the porch roof. I don\u2019t know what, if anything, they found. We used to have a lot more spiders and insects, even in winter, that might hide out in corners. But the past few years we\u2019ve seen fewer and fewer spiders and insects of any kind \u2013 and I do worry that birds are not able to find enough food. In fact, I\u2019m almost certain this scarcity must take a toll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Yellow-rumped Warblers were especially sweet, and they came so close to the window that I enjoyed a beautiful and rare close-up view of these little gray-brown birds, so that each one came so clearly to life I could almost feel what it would be like to touch them. In their subdued winter plumage, they are small gray-brown songbirds with streaks on the breast and sides, smudges of yellow under the wings, and of course, a butter-yellow rump. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the time they appear as almost anonymous \u201clittle gray birds\u201d flitting around the trees, so it\u2019s special to have a chance to see them so close-up and appreciate the fine and even intricate details of their winter feathers that might look very plain from a distance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I was cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast this morning, I stopped to watch through the kitchen window as several birds came to our small back deck. A Tufted Titmouse, a bright red Northern Cardinal, a Carolina Wren \u2013 and three Yellow-rumped Warblers. They checked out the corners and crevices of the deck flooring, […]<\/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\/2512"}],"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=2512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2513,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions\/2513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}