Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Painted Bunting, Blue Dragonfly

Sunday morning I birded the neighborhood for about 3 hours. I found 41 species, all year-round or summer-resident birds. It was fun seeing juvenile American Robins with speckled breasts learning how to find food for themselves. But the bird of the day was a male Painted Bunting that I saw briefly as it flew by me on the T&C playing fields. This is a summer resident in the Texas hill country and I've seen them in the neighborhood during the summer in the past couple years. But I was wondering if I would see them again since the Amber Oaks corporate center is developing more of their property, and the new Parmer Village DR Horton construction project cleared a lot of habitat. I always see a few of these brilliantly colored birds during spring migration. I hope they continue here during the summer as well.

On my way back I saw several of these blue dragonflies on Lake Creek Trail near the T&C soccer fields and I got this picture. After comparing my picture to my one dragonfly book, I'm pretty sure it's a Comanche Skimmer (Libellula comanche), although I don't know my dragonflies.

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