Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Baltimore Orioles sighting - not the team!

Last year I kept briefly seeing this orange bird around the house and in our lane. Looked it up in a birding book I have and thought it might be a Scarlett Tanager or a Baltimore Oriole. Two days ago I had the camera out taking pictures of the sheep and the new horses next door, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of orange. There she was, pulling wool off the fence at the other end of the paddock. I couldn’t get close and I didn’t have the correct lens, but I got a couple of blurry pictures. Can you tell what it is? I’m thinking Oriole because the head is black. The Tanager has an orange head. There were two, but the male (darker orange) was too far away to get a picture. Hopefully they are building a nest nearby and I’ll get to enjoy seeing them more often. (click on pics to enlarge)
(edited to add - Could be an Orchard Oriole. Interesting that the nesting information mentions that they line their nests with wool, among other things. )
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Orchard_Oriole/lifehistory










Here are the lambs eating their dessert – a sheep-lik that has molasses in it! I have to keep it away from the fence or the dogs get into it. (It does smell good – they should make one for people!)


We had two work horses living in the field next to us since we’ve been here. One died last month and the one left was obviously distressed. They were both sweet horses, and were always hanging near the fence line when the sheep were out and I even saw one of them break off a high branch with new leaves on it, and give it to my sheep on the other side! Not kidding! He did it several times.

Here are the new horses. The one on the right is the old one.



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