A mostly cloudy day, very warm and humid, but breezy. Highlights from a late morning walk included two Gray Catbirds mewing in the old field, a handsome Brown Thrasher sitting quietly among the branches of a weedy bush, a White-eyed Vireo singing a surprisingly rich song in a thicket, and about a dozen Chimney Swifts swarming against the clouds and chattering as they swept over, at first very high, then coming down low over the road around me.<\/p>\n
A small flock of little birds in one grassy yard all scattered up into the branches of trees when I got too close. Among them were at least one juvenile Bluebird, looking very wide-eyed, sturdy and alert, and one juvenile Phoebe, looking rather rumpled and scruffy.<\/p>\n
But the most memorable sighting today was a stunning Red-eyed Vireo in a large dogwood tree on the edge of a thicket. I saw it fly into the tree, but it was a few minutes before I could find it rustling among the thick leaves. When I did finally see it, it was a very close-up, clear view. The light must have been just right, coming through a break in the dogwood leaves, which were dense, but curled and fading, with lots of berries, a few already red. The Vireo looked sleek, with greenish back, creamy white breast and belly, and a pale, very faint wash of yellow below the wings and tail, a smooth gray head, elegant white eye-stripe and thin black eye-line \u2013 and the best part was a gleaming, ruby-red eye, something I\u2019ve seldom been close enough to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A mostly cloudy day, very warm and humid, but breezy. Highlights from a late morning walk included two Gray Catbirds mewing in the old field, a handsome Brown Thrasher sitting quietly among the branches of a weedy bush, a White-eyed Vireo singing a surprisingly rich song in a thicket, and about a dozen Chimney Swifts […]<\/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\/334"}],"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=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}