Hello, tweets.

A few minutes ago I had a great nature moment.

Robins have been flying over the neighborhood all day, presumably searching
for food sources. Amazingly, I heard one in brief full song when I was
outside at one point.

But the exciting thing was when birds started falling out of the air into
my yard, their target a Cotoneaster shrub full of bright red, half-inch
berries. They dropped into it one after another, with birds constantly
coming and going and as many as about 10 present at once. I tried watching
individual birds, and it seemed that each one would eat about 10 berries
before it flew away. Some lingered longer, others gobbled up their berries
at the rate of about one per second, each berry disappearing instantly into
that capacious throat. The whole episode lasted less than 5 minutes, and
they were gone. This must be a common feeding strategy, but to see it so
intimately was quite a thrill.

A bit earlier, I had watched a Hermit Thrush feeding on the same berries by
jumping up from the ground beneath the shrub, grabbing a berry and
swallowing it, taking a little more time to get it down than the robins.
That's the first of that species I've seen in the yard this winter. I think
it also was feeding on millet that I had sprinkled everywhere, along with a
Varied Thrush, also the first I'd seen in my yard. Snow can bring good
birding.

And the same to all of you!

Dennis Paulson
--
Netta Smith and Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115