Backyard Birds of December

December is a wonderful time of the year. I really love the crisp weather and when the sun comes out so do a lot of the birds. I have been watching the Swinhoe's White-eye birds from my kitchen window as they come to feed at the hummingbird feeder. I put the jelly dish out for them and they are pigging out at that feeder too. A beautiful male Townsend's Warbler flew into my yard and so did a cute little Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Spotting a Yellow-rumped Warbler at the jelly dish was a surprise. I have lots of hummingbird feeders in my yard and many beautiful hummers jockeying for the feeders. I got to see a beautiful male Allen's Hummingbird really showing off his colors near me. See the photos below as I post the shots I took of the backyard birds of December. Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Morning with Swinhoe's White-eye

We are having some really nice weather in Southern California. As I walked out to my garden to check on my plants, I noticed some bird activity around the newly blossomed flowers on my Firewheel tree. The birds visiting the flowers are the small warbler type birds that are yellow-olive and have a distinctive white eye ring. They're called Swinhoe's White-eye. I have featured them in my blog before as they were perched in my neighbors' tree. But today, they came into my yard and were quite close. They are very shy, flighty, and hard to photograph. Just the clicking of my camera could make them take flight but the irresistible nectar of the flower was keeping them in one area. My grandson had just pruned the tree and left this branch of newly opened flowers for me to enjoy. Well, it looks like these white-eyes are also enjoying my Firewheel tree blossoms too! I had to stay quiet for quite a long time just to get some shots of these beauties. Here are some photos of these white-eyes enjoying the nectar from the flowers of my Firewheel tree. There were at least 4 of them but I was able to only capture 2 in the same frame. I also noticed that the white-eye would chase away the hummingbirds that wanted to get some nectar. I got a few shots of the hummingbird coming to the flower when they were not around.