Other Visiting Birds at the Sunflower Field

Today’s post features a few other birds that were active in the sunflower field where I’ve been working.

One of the coolest birds that frequented the sunflower field was the Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea). The most obvious sex of the visitors was the male, as shown in this image:

Male Indigo Bunting on a sunflower

 

Not to be outdone, a male Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea) was photographed (when I originally published this post, I thought all were indigo buntings, but an alert reader corrected me):

 

Male Indigo Bunting on a sunflower

Male Indigo Bunting on a sunflower

All of the above images are male birds. I did see a few females (mostly brown in color) but they tended to fly to sunflowers that were short in stature … they seemed to not like to perch on the tops like the males did.

Another bird that visited was unidentified, but looked to be in the flycatcher family (if you know the identity, I’d appreciate knowing):

Flycatcher (species unidentified) sitting on a sunflower

 

And the last visiting bird to the sunflower field was the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. On the east side of this sunflower field, there is a thick stand of trumpet vine and I’ve seen a lot of these little guys hanging out there. But one of the birds would occasionally fly out to the sunflowers:

 

Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird at a sunflower

Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird

 

All of the hummingbirds seen lately, even around my house,  have been females. I don’t know if our drought has caused the males to begin the southward migration early, or if there is another reason for not seeing any. But sure would have been nice to a bit of red in the mix, too :o)

Tomorrow’s post will include some non-bird, winged critters that frequented the sunflower field. And if you’ve missed any of the previous sunflower field posts, you can click on these links to find them:

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