Dear Tweets;

I had what appears like a Rustic Bunting at my birdfeeder twice in the
last month.

This bird is brown/black overall back with primary white breast,
speckled at its breast sides with reddish brown, long thin tail, bird
size abt. 5 - 7in long w/ tail, reddish brown streak on top of his
head, reddish brown patch at eye, white under bill and around eye in a
ring. The differences from photo at BirdWeb is that the white eye
circle extends further around from the neck around the eye. This was
the best match I could find. Other suggestions?

Also I have seen an un-id bird with an orange neck ring and another
bird with a white neck ring at the canal along with my favortie
Tri-colored Blackbird and Violet Green Swallows mixed in with Barn
Swallows. There were two hawklike birds that passed through and made
all of the swallows scatter last week. The very small hawklike birds
flew with angular wing arches together over the canal forcing all of
the swallows to group away from them calling as they went.

There are different birds in my yard this year as compared to last
year. I have less chickadees, more European Starlings, and much
different visitors.

The Chestnut backed Chickadee nest residing with babies in my swallow
feeder has been taken over by Violet Green Swallows. One day the
Chestnut backed Chickadee's were feeding their young, and the next the
Swallows were fighting to gain entrance bringing in nesting material.
I was so looking forward to seeing the young learn to fly.

There are many Common Yellow Throats in a local field with White
Crowned Sparrows and Spotted Towhees, California Quail occassionally,
American Crows and at the pond I was told that a small group that I
startled were Dove. I didn't see any ducks on the pond that were
there this winter.


Michelle
Yelm
Thurston County
yelmbackyard at gmail.com