Fruit & Feathers

This is my first post for SkyWatch. I hope y'all don't mind that I combined it with my Friday's Feathers post.

Today's Friday's Feathers belong to the Bluegray Gnatcatcher:


If you subscribe to Friday's Feathers, you've seen this little guy before, from a different angle. The Bluegray Gnatcatcher is a bug-eater. He spends most of his time in trees and shrubs hawking for insects. He's a really good neighbor, fun to watch, and hard to photograph. :-) This time he silhouetted himself against the brilliant blue South Florida winter sky, perched on the large mango tree in my backyard.

For reference, the mango trees generally start blooming in January, but this year, they got started several weeks early. It also seems that, for some reason, all of the mango trees in the area have been blooming much more heavily than in recent years. No one knows if this will result in heavier crops of fruit, since they still have to survive the winds of March and the rains of April, or even the recent Arctic cold snap (and future ones). Personally, I haven't had a single piece of fruit off of them in 3 years - but the bees have been particularly busy and it could happen!

Please click on the photo for a way better look.

Don't forget to check out more SkyWatch images here. And for more Friday's Feathers, click here.

Happy Weekend!