worth the trip

So Daniel and i drove 50 miles roundtrip to see this beauty--no, I did not take this picture. We tried but couldn't get it focused enough in the short time he was there. You don't really want to waste time taking pictures when you can just look at him. We were worried that we'd get there and he'd never show himself, so we were very lucky to only have to wait about 20 minutes. Laika sat on my feet while we watched from afar.

Considering that I've only seen sparrows for the last 3 months and cardinals, he was beautiful. And they aren't very common in Maryland, and he's been hanging out for about a month now at the person's feeder in Arnold right along a busy bike path. Go figure.

Painted Bunting has two distinct breeding populations: one found along the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina south to central Florida; and another that stretches across much of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, southward into northern Mexico. The Audubon Important Bird Area (IBA) Program has identified a number of sites that provide breeding habitat for Painted Bunting, including North Carolina's Bald Head/Smith Island IBA, which supports 35-40 breeding pairs, and Florida's Fort George and Talbot Islands IBA, where 78 singing males were detected and over 100 birds were banded in 2000. The eastern population of Painted Bunting winters in southern Florida and probably in the northwestern Caribbean