Diary 5/24/12

I can't tell you how many birds were in this tree when I took this picture, but you can't see any of them.  There were Western Tanagers with their red heads and yellow bodies, Lazuli Buntings with bright, teal-blue heads and rusty collars, a whole variety of female birds in buff and beige, and a house wren with some young ones.  They were all there to get what I call the silk worms, the little inch worms that come out of the bark and eventually swing down on threads they emit until they touch the ground.  I don't know the rest of their cycle and I should look them up to see if they are some way related to the rain beetles that appear after the first rains in fall at the bottoms of these same White Oak trees.