January 24, 2005
Lots of warmth and lots of rain. (Also chilliness and dankness, but not much and not for long.) It's not quite February and already feels like Spring is coming. Which it is.

Phaenopepla singles bar
A male phaenopepla has been hanging out pretty continuously on the ocotillo and scrub palo verdes out in back of my riparian area. He is gorgeous--glossy black with a little crest and reddish eyes. I haven't seen him use the pond (though assume he does), but he pretty clearly considers this good territory, because yesterday I saw him doing the mate-attracting moves, where he flaps up in the air to display his sexy white wingbars, then perches again.

Where's the feeder?
I am a victim of my own success: the cardinal feeder has proved so popular with a growing crowd of cardinals and pyrrhuloxia that the patio was getting fouled with bird dung and tons of empty sunflower seeds. So this morning I moved it out onto the fence in the riparian area, where I can still observe (though not so closely) and the patio will stay clean. I had thought it would take the birds a few days to learn the new location, but about a minute after I came back indoors, a pyrrhuloxia was feeding in the new location. I haven't seen any others since, but I also havent' seen them checking out the patio.