Not the sports team, but the oriole birds have been daily visitors for about a week now. Orioles are a species that had been on my sighting wish list since we moved to the Ozarks. They migrate through our area on their way to Maryland (I suppose they’re going to Maryland-isn’t that where the team’s home is?).

Baltimore Orioles

These colorful song birds do spend their summers in more northern regions but I’d never gotten to see one until this year. We’ve had about five or six of them here. Some juveniles and some females and a couple of males.

They’re very shy. I couldn’t get a good photo of them because they wouldn’t come to eat while I was outside with the camera and tripod. So I had to sit inside and shoot through the screen door. This is the best image I got:

Some of my local friends tell me that they really love grape jelly, but I didn’t have any of that. So I sliced oranges for them and they loved that too.

Other birds we’ve spotted this spring include rose-breasted grosbeak, blue grosbeak, American goldfinch, and heard but not seen the tanagers. There’s also the usual birds like blue jays, cardinals, flickers, indigo buntings, and woodpeckers. The phoebe who builds a nest on the porch has been working on freshening it up.

Bird in the Stove

This afternoon when I came in from working in the ginseng habitat nursery and garden, I heard something fluttering around in the living-room. Turned out a bird had gone down the chimney and landed in the wood-stove. Good thing there was no fire going! I took it out, checked for injury and turned it loose on the front porch. It flew so hard and fast it was over the trees and up to the mountain on the other side of the creek in no time. Apparently it was glad to be free.

I opted not to torture the poor thing long enough to get my camera out to take a picture of it. I’m not sure what kind it was,  but it was blue with a rosy chest. I thought it might be a blue bird, but it was pretty soot-covered and I didn’t want to scare it to the point of having a heart attack by cleaning it up, so I just let it go. It would make more sense had it been a chimney swift. Seemed too small to be a blue bird, too, but then I’ve never held one in my hands before to know how they feel. The only other birds with blue on them here are the indigo buntings and grosbeaks, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t either of those.