ORANGE AND RED

About the time our plum tree blooms the bright colored Bullock’s Orioles come to visit.

I like the black eye liner this guy wears.

 We’ve had too much rain and too much cold this year.  

This weather isn’t even for the birds.

Another visitor I see in the late spring is the Western Tanager. 

I watch them from the window over my desk.

Sometimes they watch back.

 The red pigment in the face of the Western Tanager 

is rhodoxanthin, a pigment rare in birds.

 It must be acquired from the diet, presumably from insects 

that themselves acquire the pigment from plants.

These little guys eat wasps!  Something that hot would turn my face red.