Eastern Kingbirds

There has been a mysterious kind of bird I keep seeing. Every time I see them they are flying away from me. I kept thinking they might be Robins, but these mostly dark birds had a white fringe along the edge of their tails. I thought maybe it was just something about the robins that I never noticed before, but I've been very skeptical.

Then this last time I saw the same birds, I noticed them flying towards the meadow area of Carpenter Lake Park. I quickly followed them hoping I could find out their identity. At first I saw nothing, but then I saw birds of all different types darting around. One of these types was the kind I was looking for!

I just happened to notice one of these mystery birds of mine fly onto a high up branch of a tree on the edge of the meadow. While I was watching it and trying to focus my camera, I noticed it wasn't alone. There were two of these birds sitting side by side. They were sitting high in the tree, so I wasn't sure if I could get a decent shot. As you can see, I ended up doing alright.

These birds obviously turned out not to be robins, since they don't have that characteristic red breast that all American Robins have. These birds breasts were all white, while the rest of the birds were a very dark color, maybe black. So the question for me was what kind of birds were they?

Well, it took a little bit of research for me. And since I'm new to identifying birds, I'm not sure if I'm right. But these birds appear to be Eastern Kingbirds. All of the information I found matches up with these birds. They seem to be kind of aggressive towards other birds, but that's a story I'll tell you another time.

I was able to move to a few different locations to get these pictures. I learned from these birds to stand a little farther back in the field away from the trees. I get a better view of the birds and they don't get scared of me quite so easily when I'm standing back a little bit.

The other benefit is that I get to study the plants, especially the flowers, of the meadow a little bit closer. So I learned some good things by chasing birds. The benefits are that I will have plenty of other fresh new discoveries to write about now! That's always a good thing!