Tag: birds

I’m not really a birder. I don’t have a life list. But I was pretty excited to see my first phainopepla.

Phainopeplas live in the southwestern U.S. and into central Mexico. They eat mostly berries, along with small insects. One of their cool traits is a special mechanism in their gizzard that separates berry skins from the rest of the fruit, sending the skins to a different part of the intestine to help with digestion. So far, they’re the only bird known to do this.

Their favorite food is the fruit of the desert mistletoe. These berries don’t have a lot of nutrients, so phainopeplas need to eat a lot of them—sometimes many hundreds in a single day. The berries move through their intestines in just about 12 minutes. They rarely drink water, getting almost all the moisture they need from the mistletoe berries.

Phainopeplas are also great mimics and can copy the calls of around a dozen other bird species.

It was such a delight to watch this Western Bluebird swing back and forth on a hanging twig. Just sitting there, swinging in the breeze …