Feathered Friday - Red, Yellow, Black and White

Here are some colorful birds I spotted this week for #featheredfriday by @melinda010100

I finally saw my first scarlet tanager for the year.

At first I thought he was just another loud robin singing as their song sounds somewhat similar.

But then I noticed the nice bright red against the fresh green leaves.

Now he's off to another tree to belt out his loud song.

Here's another red bird, an uncooperative cardinal hiding behind the branch. I stepped to the side to get a better shot and right as the camera focused he flew off.

Quite a few yellow warblers were out in the thorn bushes.

I only managed to get a couple shots as most of them were buried deep within the thorn trees.

Now for an evil copper headed cowbird. They have a slight copper head with a black body. These guys are bad as they lay their eggs inside song birds' nests (especially the yellow warbler's nests above) and then the larger cowbird chicks end up knocking out the other chicks out of the nest. Then the poor song bird ends up feeding one big cowbird chick, why don't they build their own nests? Even worse is that if you try and remove their egg from the nest the cowbird will return and destroy all the other eggs in the nest. Maybe this is why they invented pellet guns lol.

Here's a Great Egret surveying his turtle swamp domain. Perhaps he is hoping for a hatching to gulp down.

Finally a brown hermit thrush. These guys might look a little plain but their song is amazing. I call them the wind chime bird since they can do high pitched overtone singing.