© 2001 & 2005
& 2006 & 2007 - Walter
Bauer, San Antonio, Texas
Field Marks: A sleek, elegant, soft-plumaged bird common throughout the United States in winter. It's highly gregarious, and often found in flocks. They like to eat berries off of berry producing shrubs and trees abound. They constantly give a soft, very high-pitched note, and flock members busily fly back and forth to nearby bushes or trees with berries. Flies in tight flocks on a rapid wing beat with alternating short, arching glides. Adults are a warm brown turning to yellow on belly and white on under tail coverts; rump, wings, and tail are gray, with waxy red tips on secondary, and yellow band at tip of tail. The photograph on the left was taken from my roof. These were sitting in our Spanish Oak Tree. The birds in the middle and the one flying on the right were taken while in a tree bordering my backyard with my neighbors in March 2005.
Voice: Calls are soft, high-pitched,
prolonged single notes, often clear but sometimes with lisping quality.
Where found: Breeds from Southeast
Alaska east to Newfoundland, across North United States from Northern California
to Northern Georgia. Winters from South British Columbia east to Maine and south
throughout the United States.
Texas: Winters throughout.
Habitat:
Various; semi-open, wooded, towns, etc.