It just started raining, and I hope it keeps it up. For the past two weeks we’ve had no rain worth mentioning. A couple of times it rained for a few minutes, once we got all the way up to 5/100s of an inch. Like I said, nothing worth mentioning. So rain now would be very appreciated.
We had some different birds visiting our western ironweed a week ago. My first ID attempt went in the direction of orange–crowned warblers, but the birds were much bigger than the 5" those warblers are supposed to be. So now I’m leaning toward female Scott’s orioles. Yellow underneath, gray on top, 9" — seems like a better identification. The orioles were sitting on the ironweed and getting nectar from the flowers. Interestingly, the hummingbirds don’t generally feed at the ironweed, but they do use it as a banco!
I’ve been scolded (I won’t name names, but you know who you are!) so I’ll try to be a touch more regular with my posts. I hope you are all having a lovely summer. We are.