Caught in the act, finally

Well, today I saw no other species nabbing grapes except a Northern Mockingbird, so the new feeding program is to quit with the grapes. I brought some cracked corn from Alpine today, and the Varied Thrush seems very happy with a diet of that. Meanwhile, I'm letting the mockingbird finish off the rest of the grapes.

Kelly Bryan has his 2012 hummingbird banding report posted to his website now. Here's the link to it.

http://westtexashummingbirds.com/information/2012-annual-report/

I think it's exciting. When you plug away, banding session after banding session, you don't realize the importance (I don't anyway), but when he gets the data organized, it's quite impressive. I'm proud to be part of the team.

Of course, the one time I had to miss for road work, he got the state's 35th documented Costa's.

Photo by Kelly Bryan taken during banding Jan 14.

 I went down yesterday to photograph it, and was dismayed that I couldn't pick it out from the Anna's. So I just photographed everything I saw. Male Costa's are easier because they have at least one purple gorget feather.

Here's a photo (from the 120 I took) that Kelly said is the Costa's Hummingbird. Apparently the clean, unmarked throat is the most obvious feature.