Colorful Visitor to the Garden

As I was enjoying the garden near dusk this evening when I was visited by this little fellow...a male painted bunting.

I have had the good fortune of hosting the colorful little birds in my garden for the last several years starting in the spring.

I never knew that the US had any birds as brilliantly colored as these...it was quite a shock the first time I actually saw one.


I hope you will share visitors in your gardens!!
John

He's delightful and seems quite at home there, John.

We get lots of birds to the garden and I have the pleasure of seeing many more on my two afternoons a week voluntary work at the RSPB local centre. Here are some of the common ones I get in the garden:

Blue Tit


Chaffinch


Goldfinch


Great Tit


Greater Spotted Woodpecker


Bullfinch


Can't find a decent pic of our greenfinches. Dunno why - will remedy that tomorrow.

These are but some of them. If anyone is at all interested (and has the time) my ongoing album of the birds I encounter regularly is HERE

John - what a beautiful visitor you have, and how lucky you are! Thanks for posting these pictures. As you may be aware Painted Bunting population have declined sharply in the last few decades. I am glad to see that yours is thriving!

David B.

Great pics Fiona!! I especially like the head on shot:) I will explore your journal when I get some time today.

Thanks David! I do consider myself to by lucky!!

John

Nice picture, John. Thanks for giving us the bird.

Fiona, as a fellow birder I really appreciate seeing the pictures of birds from Scotland. The photography is very nice. I see one of your birds is called a Gold Finch, and we have a bird here in the eastern US that goes by the same name, although it is an altogether different species. Here's a photo I took in the garden of our Gold Finch (sorry it is not up to the quality of your photo's and John's):



We also have a small gray and white bird with a crest that is called a Tufted Titmouse (sorry, no picture), and that name is sometimes shortened to just Tit. Although I am aware of Great Tits, I have never seen a Blue Tit. Just as well, I suppose. They would be out of place here in the South. Are there many Great Tits in Scotland? If so, it seems like that might be of use to the people who promote Scotland as a tourist destination. I imagine a publicity campaign along the lines of "Visit Scotland, and see all the Great Tits!" would arouse a good deal of interest. From birders, I mean.

Of course you meant from birders, Arthur! What else could you possibly have meant?

FWIW the list of tits in the UK includes Great Tits, Blue Tits, Crested Tits, Bearded Tits (the mind boggles!), Long Tailed Tits, Marsh Tits, Coal Tits and of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Just Googled it and our Goldfinch is in the Carduelis family (Carduelis carduelis) as opposed to yours which is in the Spinus family (S. tristis.) We could also talk about the thrushes...

... but that would be a load of Turdus.

Fiona, Heather and I enjoyed your bird photos. Thanks for linking them.

All the other birds were very cool as well.

I haven't been getting birds in my "garden", just these "Sciurus Daemn"

...demon squirrels



JOe

fiona wrote:Of course you meant from birders, Arthur! What else could you possibly have meant?

FWIW the list of tits in the UK includes Great Tits, Blue Tits, Crested Tits, Bearded Tits (the mind boggles!), Long Tailed Tits, Marsh Tits, Coal Tits and of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Fiona, I've always been a fan of tits, especially the Great Tit but not the Bearded Tit so much.

AJ wrote:

I have never seen a Blue Tit.

You must have missed the Avatar movie Arthur...