Throuch potato

I never see the Varied Thrush dashing and darting about the oasis anymore. He just waddles to the feeder and back into the brush. I'm worried that I've created a couch potato. That might not be so good if he is unable, or uninspired, to migrate.....  like, soon.....

Hopefully, he's just building up his reserves because his flight home is going to be much longer than it is in normal years. And maybe he senses he's way out of range and going to need big reserves to make it back.

It's so much fun to have hummingbirds all year long. I can't remember photographing a Rufous Hummingbird in February, so set out to do that today. I wasn't able to get close enough for a good shot. Likely he's banded and has become leery of me.

Yesterday I made a javelina-proof ground feeder, I hope. The birds haven't discovered it yet and as long as the thrush is around I won't remove the temporary trash can feeder, but this one is for the future. The temporary one is in a location that floods. I'll have to remove the plastic bucket from this one and set in a metal one, but for now that's all I had handy. (Mice will enlarge the seed ports eventually on the plastic one.)