I missed yesterday too. I will stubbornly (and by now meaninglessly) number these posts up to 100, a nice round number, but apparently I'm more or less finished with the daily posts. Because I don't think I have more than one twofer in me, and that's where I'm at already.
In any case, today I'm featuring a sweet little bird that I am always delighted to see out in the desert,
Phainopepla nitens. This year I got lucky with the timing of my visit to Joshua Tree, because of what they eat. "Phainopeplas have digestive tracts specialized for eating mistletoe
fruit. These berries are low in nutrients, so the birds have to consume
lots of them. The berries spend only about 12 minutes in a Phainopepla’s
intestine, and the birds may eat 1,100 berries in a day." And it turns out the mistletoe, living on mesquite, acacia, palo verde, and ironwood in the sandy washes here, fruits nicely during the winter months. They also eat other berries, as well as insects.
This morning I saw one flitting about, then perching atop a woody bush and calling. (In the Cornell
list of Phainopepla sounds, what I heard was more or less like the first "call," a sweet little cheep. Though they also mimic the sounds of other birds.) When he flew, I caught the flash of white.
The name Phainopepla is from the Greek, meaning 'shining robe'. They are in the silky-flycatcher family, Ptilogonatidae, of which there are only four species in three genera, all but this one living in Mexico to Central America. They are not related to flycatchers; their nearest common ancestors are the waxwings (which I wrote about here).
I feel blessed to have been able to commune with one this morning as the sun rose. What a great start to the day.
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