Chickadee, Starlings and Robins

Another couple of days of sitting in the yard enjoying the new changes to the birding landscape and and a few more photos to add to the files. 

In addition to the watercourse changes I moved a rock bird bath, which is extremely heavy, to a better viewing/photography location.  The move was only about two feet but this is a solid block about 16-18" cubed!  At any rate one of the first benefits of the move was this Chestnut-backed chickadee having a drink from the bird bath.  I later photographed both a Chestnut-backed chickadee and a Black-capped chickadee on the bath at the same time. 

 

 Are European starlings gregarious?  Of course they are... way past the point of being obnoxious!  These were taking a bath together in a relatively small bird bath.  I count at least five in this photo, but I've got at least one other photo that shows more! 

 

I photographed this American robin against the tree root I mentioned in my prior post.  It went on to bathe in the upper pool of the watercourse.  

It seems that every time I sit in the yard and watch/photograph birds I learn something.  Yesterday afternoon I had an apparent family group of American robins enter the yard and the two adults went to different water features to bathe, with one of the young robins following each.  At the smaller bath one of the adults immersed itself while being closely watched by the young robin.  After a short while the two appeared to be having some sort of disagreement with both opening their beaks in an apparent threatening posture.  I probably took close to fifteen photos of this behavior.  The adult bird would settle in the water and then the two would open their beaks and, in some cases, actually lunge towards each other. I've thought about some possibilities but I don't have a good explanation for the behavior.    

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