Updated: Sunday January 04, 2009

Robert Lee CBC 2009 images from Texas:

The highlights included Prairie Falcon, hundreds of Mountain Bluebirds, and Sage Thrasher.

The "lowlights" were a substantial lack of sparrows.

• January 3rd - Robert Lee CBC
  
  
• January 4th - Day After Robert Lee CBC
  
  

• Mountain Bluebird #1 - part of a flock of over 100 birds!
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #2 - a pair resting between feeding flights. The lighting is strange in this image. It was NOT "PhotoShopped" in order to get a male and female into the same frame.
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #3 - a female resting between feeding flights
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #4 - a male resting between feeding flights
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #7 - a male resting between feeding flights
  
  
• Sage Thrasher #1 - pausing between drinks at a water trough
  
  
• Sage Thrasher #2 - pausing between drinks at a water trough
  
  

I was able to find the huge flock of Mountain Bluebirds we had seen the day before on the Christmas Count. I parked along the side of the road in the general area where they were feeding on the berries of juniper bushes. After about 20 minutes they accepted me as part of the landscape, and began (re)using the leafless trees beside me as resting points in between flights to the junipers.

Bluebirds are such a treat to see...I hope you will pardon my indulgence with so many images.

• Mountain Bluebird #8 - a female giving me "the once over"
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #10 - a male giving me "the once over"
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #15 - a female attracted to the sound of my camera's motor drive
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #17 - a male resting with its feathers slightly puffed out for warmth
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #20 - [presumably?] the same male as #17 above after returning to the same perch
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #21 - a young male molting into adult plumage
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #25 - a typical female plumage
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #26 - a typical female plumage
  
  
• Mountain Bluebird #28 - a young male molting into adult plumage
  
  
• American Goldfinch #6 - a male just beginning to molt into breeding plumage