We did it! Made it to the end of the month. My final painting is an idea, an experiment and a preliminary sketch for something I plan to do a larger complete watercolor of. The Bearded Reedling is a small seed-eating, social denizen of reed beds throughout Europe, and it was Jorge's major target bird for our trip (a new family - Panuridae). The experiment was to paint a somewhat more detailed background behind the birds, which they are actually a part of - if you look back through this January series, I tend to plop the bird down on top of a scene, to give a sense of place. Still have some work to do!

Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus
Dragomansko Marsh, Sofia Bulgaria, September 8, 2024

Jorge wanted to go out with a bang today, but there just wasn't much out there. Fortunately when there's a Northern Cardinal in a thicket, you know it. A bright red bird doesn't stay hidden for long...

Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis
Horsebarn Hill, Storrs Connecticut

Penultimate day of our January Challenge, version 2025! I finished part two of yesterday's sketch, and it's a bird with a funny name, I mean, it's named for a feature it does NOT have. Meet the Spotless Starling, Sturnus unicolor, found throughout Spain and into nearby areas, including Morocco. This bird was a real target of mine - for the name alone! It really is this shaggy, and usually appears black, with green and bronzy-purple iridescence.

Spotless Starling Sturnus unicolor
Granada Spain, September 7, 2024

Starlings, with and without spots
European Starling and Spotless Starling

New birds have been a challenge to find again, as cold and windy days have returned to Connecticut (after a few pleasant days). Today Jorge brings you our feisty Black-capped Chickadee, year-round resident and a familiar visitor to backyard feeders.

Black-capped Chickadee, Poecile atricapillus
on a branch of Staghorn Sumac, Rhus typhina

 Today's painting was ambitious, and I finished only half of it. Tomorrow will be part two! Stay tuned... The familiar European Starling sports a really incredible coat in the non-breeding season - iridescent purple and green with little chevrons of white at the tip of each feather. When the breeding season rolls around, the feather tips have mostly worn away, leaving a uniform black-looking bird - this is called "wear molt" even though it's not technically a molt.

European Starling, Sturnus vulgaris, in non-breeding plumage

Jorge's bird for today is one that uses the nest boxes around Horsebarn Hill in the springtime. This time of year when everything is gray and brown, the Eastern Bluebird is a little fleck of the bright sky flitting through the landscape - in fields, woodlands and even our yard. 

Eastern Bluebird, Sialia sialis, Windsor, Connecticut
- male, perching on a poison ivy vine -

 Of Robins and Blackbirds... two hundred plus years ago, when the avifauna of this continent was being newly described to Western science, the describers were all European. They looked for similarities to what was familiar to them, and here's what we got... They had a robin so we got a robin (unrelated), they had a blackbird so we got a blackbird (unrelated). However OUR robin is related to THEIR blackbird. The family to which their robin belongs does not live in the Americas and the family to which our blackbird belongs lives ONLY in the Americas. Fun stuff. (Sizes are fairly accurate)

UL: European Robin, Erithacus rubecula; UR: American Robin, Turdus migratorius
LL: Red-winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus; LR: Eurasian Blackbird, Turdus merula

Jorge has been having pretty good luck in his mini-quest to photograph all of the raptors of Horsebarn Hill. This one, however, was a big surprise. The Peregrine Falcon is not a regular visitor to the hill, though it is certainly found in many places in Connecticut. When it was up in this treetop, nothing else moved - even the starling flocks were quiet - the supreme aerial predator had arrived...

Peregrine Falcon, Falco peregrinus, Horsebarn Hill, Storrs Connecticut

Five days left in our challenge... Today I thought it was time for a Junco-palooza. Our ubiquitous Dark-eyed Junco has many many subspecies, with subtly different plumages - decades ago we called our eastern form the Slate-colored Junco. During our April trip to Arizona we were excited to find another species, the Yellow-eyed Junco, up in the higher elevations of Mount Lemmon, near Tucson. Then in the low elevations of the Chiricahua Mountains, we saw the Gray-headed subspecies of the Dark-eyed Junco, and if we'd been paying closer attention, we might also have seen the Red-backed subspecies. And as a bonus, I've included the Volcano Junco from Costa Rica, which we saw in December 2023.

Clockwise spiral from upper left: Yellow-eyed Junco, Junco phaeonotus,
Volcano Junco, Junco vulcani, Dark-eyed Junco: Gray-headed ssp, Junco hyemalis caniceps,  
Red-backed ssp., J. h. dorsalis, and Slate-colored ssp. J. h. hyemalis

The low angle of the sun in winter (at 41.5 degrees north latitude anyway) means you can get that "golden hour" lighting even in late morning. This female Ruddy Duck was one of a pair floating on a pond at the fish hatchery the other day, and the light was beautiful. The male was there also, but mostly with his head tucked under his wing.

Ruddy Duck, Oxyura jamaicensis,
Quinebaug Valley fish hatchery, Plainville Connecticut

It's merganser day! For my sketch I took a chance... went with black watercolor paint directly on the paper - no preliminary drawing. Sometimes I just have to loosen up a little. I used a couple of Jorge's older photos as reference - love the contrasts and the reflections.

Left, Hooded Merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus
Right, Red-breasted Merganser, Mergus serrator

One of our weekend beauties was this pair of Hooded Mergansers on a pond at the fish hatchery. There were more of them down on the Quinebaug River, along with a few Common Mergansers and other ducks, but the confines of the pond kept these two a little closer to the camera.

Hooded Merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus
Quinebaug Fish Hatchery, Plainville, Connecticut

 It's Saturday again, and we went out to one of my favorite nearby birding places, the Quinebaug Valley State Trout Hatchery. There's always something there - like Horsebarn Hill, there are local specialties, not necessarily unusual, but special anyway. You can always see a kingfisher, several species of ducks, a few different sparrows, and today we both had a "lifer"! But today's kingfisher reminded me that I missed one in my series of Coraciiformes a while back - so here today, is your Common Kingfisher, which I've placed beside the Arda River in Madzharovo, Bulgaria, where we saw it in September.

Common Kingfisher, Alcedo atthis
Arda River, Madzharovo Bulgaria, September 10, 2024

When we finish our January challenge a few days from now, I think I will share all of the photos Jorge took but didn't have space for here in our 31 days. Today was one of those days, so we chose the bird I mentioned above - a double-lifer! The Rusty Blackbird had been seen at the fish hatchery earlier this week and we hoped it would still be around today - our lucky day. This was a new species for both of us and we had great views!

Rusty Blackbird, Euphagus carolinus
Quinebaug Valley State Trout Hatchery, Plainville Connecticut