I spent the last two weeks on the road, teaching at Lost Art Press then visiting friends in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Tennessee. And doing some research in Pennsylvania and Delaware. And now I’m home, sorting photos. I wrote about the trip on my substack blog – you can read it there, open to all. https://peterfollansbeejoinerswork.substack.com/p/it-was-long-but-it-wasnt-strange

So this one is about the birds I saw at Drew & Louise Langsner’s – first two are cedar waxwings feeding on the mulberry tree.

One of the most visible birds there was male indigo bunting (Passerina cyanea). I didn’t see the female. This might be the first time I’ve ever photographed them…he kept in the shady places, hard to get enough light on him.

I brightened this one up after the fact. Not something I’m good at, just used the auto-function.

The hummingbirds were everywhere, zipping right past my ear many times.

A bird I’ve only seen a few times before is the hooded warbler (Setophaga citrina) – got a slightly-out-of-focus shot of the male:

The female was around too – they both kept to the shade.

The next one, in the mulberry tree with the waxwings – is a tricky one. The scarlet tanager (Piranga olivacea) a female. I saw a male, way up high.

It’s funny that the English name has the color of the male, while the scientific name has the color of the female. AND – turns out they aren’t even tanagers, they belong to the cardinal family. Learn something new every day…I’ll substitute a scarlet tanager male from last spring, just because I’ll never get a better picture of one of them anyway. I almost bumped into this guy last year. Now you see where they get the name.

and here’s the female one more time, better light on her as she wolfed some mulberries.

There were lots more birds there, just not lots more good-enough photos. Black-throated green warbler (Setophaga virens) and black-throated blue warbler (Setophaga caerulescens). An ovenbird. Eastern towhees. Here’s a slightly soft shot of a yellow-throated warbler (Setophaga dominica)- a bird I had only seen once before.

There were blue-gray gnatcatchers, northern parula and some I’ve forgotten. I’ll tack on one lousy photo, only because I’m 98% sure it’s a prothonotary warbler – a bird I had never seen. But I could be wrong. It’s different from the female hooded warbler, which is the only other thing I think it could be.

July is often not the best month for birding, but around Louise’s garden, the birds don’t know that. I was barely outside the limits of this photo to see all these birds. Amazing fun.