Winged Wednesday — 5/20/2026: Birds and Berries

[Eric Gofreed]

t’s Winged Wednesday, where feathers, flutters, and flight steal the show! Whether they’re zipping, swooping, sunbathing, or just striking a sassy pose, we want to see your favorite winged wonders. Birds, bugs, bats, or butterflies—if it’s got wings, it’s fair game!

My contribution this week: Birds and Berries.
Every photo this week was taken at the same pyracantha bush in my yard a few years ago. For several weeks,every bird in Arizona apparently decided to stop by for lunch.

Cedar Waxwing
A cedar waxwing can swallow berries so fast you begin to suspect the bird is being paid by volume.

Phainopepla
The Phainopepla looks like a gothic rock star who wandered into a berry berry good buffet.

American Robin
The robins eventually arrived in force and stripped the bush clean in roughly twelve hours. Nature can be remarkably efficient when free food is involved.

Western Bluebird
The Western Bluebird somehow manages to make berry theft look wholesome and emotionally uplifting.

Hermit Thrush
The Hermit Thrush always looks slightly offended to be photographed during lunch.

 

[AlanLichty]

Too bad they won't prune the pyracantha for you at the same time. You got some really cool looking birds stopping by for a snack.

When I lived in Salt Lake City we had a 60' long row of pyracantha that served as a fence along one side of the yard. All I ever saw were endless sparrows and finches. I hated pruning it.

 

[Trent Watts]

That bush looks extremely productive Eric.. Birds and berries indeed. Beautiful shots of the feeding birds.
I'm sticking with images taken from my kitchen window. This was another crazy week of weather. It was 28 degrees C (84F) on Thursday and then a cold front came in and the temperature dropped to just around freezing. We had another 3-4 inches of snow and slush and rain all mixed together. Some birds were hanging out around my feeder and foraging in the neighbours yard.

This Merlin was across the street and just a small dot on top of a spruce tree. I wasn't sure what bird it was so this is a cropped shot through my window (1000mm FF equivalent), thus not really clear but enough to see it was a Merlin.

A Common Grackle in the snow and rain.

A Chipping Sparrow.

A Lincoln's Sparrow digging in the leaf litter.

 

[AlanLichty]

I wandered out to my garden yesterday to see what kinds of wings I could find and ended up with a couple of flavors of bulb flies I had never heard of before.

First off a nice little female Lesser Bulb Fly (Eumerus funeralis) working over a flower on a ground cover strawberry:

I figured out it was a female when her boyfriend showed up while I was shooting:

I also captured another flavor of bulb fly with a Greater bulb fly (Merodon equestris) nearby also on the strawberry ground cover:

Not sure why their latin names are so completely different if they are part of the same family.

 

[Ken Rennie]

An Alpine chough from the Picos de Europa mountains in Northern Spain. Unfortunately I missed 2 Griffon Vultures that glided past when I had an ultra wide lens fitted. So on with the 100-400 and waited for the Vultures to return, an hour later standing in the snow at temperatures well below freezing I gave up but not before photographing the chough. Ken