A NEW BIRD SPECIES
I was sitting on my patio late one mid-October afternoon when I heard a new and different bird melody singing out very loudly in the near distance. Up, out of my chair, I tried to see where the song was coming from, but couldn't see anything. Shortly, a bird appeared at the very top of a tree, about 300-400 feet from me, as if to say, "Here I Am". I went inside to get my binoculars. It was still there when I got back outside. Focusing in, I could see it had an orange breast, black head, black tail, and black wings. I could only think of a Robin, but I haven't seen a Robin in several years. Then it spread its right wing and I could see a white splotch on it. This didn't look like a Robin, so now I'm really curious. I went back inside and got my FlipVideo camera and came back outside. It was still there so I started filming it. It was the worst of conditions. Sunset behind the subject, at dusk, and 300-400ft away. I could see that the zoom on the Flipcam was not very good, so, I tried filming through the lens of the binoculars, holding the binoculars with one hand and the Flipcam with the other, and doubting that anything worthwhile would result. But to my surprise, I was able to get an image of this new bird along with about 5 seconds of audible song, then it shut up. The bird stayed perched on the top of the tree for a good 30 minutes.
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| Identify this Bird |
As I reviewed the video, I was completely surprised that the images of this bird turned out legible. So, I made a "snapshot" of one image as a jpeg image as seen above. I'm still trying to identify this bird, but have not been able to do so at this time. Until then, see you by the feeders.
Cheers,
Harry "Gipper" Morris
