Those Kingfisher's are colorful little critters! Hearing their calls always brighten up my day, and they do have that "jungle" quality. No matter where you live you can usually find something unusual and "exotic". Ever seen an female Ichneumon wasp? Concerning the Kingfisher's I saw another one today, but was working and didn't want to risk bringing my camera and ruining it on something.
I have never had the pleasure of seeing a Pileated Woodpecker. I'm sure that they're around here, they must just be secretive. Their are plenty of large trees around here. I've seen many ancient Ironwood trees at higher elevations (a pre-columbian Native American camp could have stood at their bases) and many old Buckeye and Maple trees at lower elevations, along with a few really old apple trees.
Last fall, I've seen some really colorful birds among the willows. They looked like grosbeaks, maybe finches, and they were in a huge flock when I saw them. There were many dull brown birds, I'm thinking the females, but the others were extremely colorful - yellow and blue, maybe a little bit of red. (I've only seem them once, we couldn't help but to gawk at them.) The closest thing that I could come up with was Painting Bunting, whose range is way too far south to be possible and the colors on this bird were arranged differently. Any suggestions? Maybe a (very) recent introduction from China?
