Redbird goes a'courtin'

There were at least a dozen of these guys around the feeders yesterday morning. I have never seen that many together before. Something else is new also. See how red these two males are. Normally they have a very muted blush of red on their heads and maybe a little on there breasts. These were red all over. Assuming the get very red for mating to attract females something must have gone horribly wrong for them to get all dressed up about five months early. But, there might be a reason.

When I left the house around 10 a.m. yesterday the temperature was 10 above. When I left work about midnight it was 10 in Anchorage too. Nice drive home on clear road and turned off the highway onto the blue highway and though there was some packed snow it was pretty easy going. That was until I came around the curve out of the woods onto the open area next to the river. A blast of wind hit the Jeep so hard I thought for a moment it might go over. With it came driving rain. Om the bridge, the wind had whipped up snow from the river forming drifts across the road every place there was an opening it could find its way through. Bumpy drive across the bridge and more wind. When I got home the weather had softened the snow in the driveway. There's a lot of it. Still waiting for that snowblower repair. The Jeep really worked hard to get up near the house. Once out of it, a blast of warmth hit me from a wind gust. The thermometer read 38-40. The rain had let up. Then in the morning it was back down to about 15. Amazing. And, the red birds showed up en masse.

So could the warm wind have tricked those horny males into thinking it was spring and they put on their fine feathers to go courting. That's my take on it anyway.

AN ADDENDUM: They showed up again the next day and didn't seem to be nearly as red. My friend had this idea about that:

"That's an easy one! The flashy birds you saw yesterday were part of the rich and famous jet-setting crowd. They moved on when the common pine grosbeaks started showing up. Once your feeders were no longer exclusive, it was all over for them. They were so out of there... (Ha, ha, I am so funny.) "

(One of the days I will get on the sunny side of these birds and get a good picture.)