Birds and Open Range Critters

I think I mentioned that there is a flock of Great-Tailed Grackles hanging around the RV park, opportunistically hoping that someone's garbage sack will tear open. After the garbage collectors come around, you will see them just sort of checking things out. This female was hoping for a drink.`

Then toward evening, the whole flock started gathering on the neighbor's tree. The females tend to have the more golden breasts...

We saw this handsome top-knotted fellow, a Phainopepla male, on a mesquite tree just down the road from the park --

We startled a flock of Gambel's Quail crossing the road in front of us. There must have been twenty or thirty of them --

I think I've also mentioned that we are in Open Range country. We had gone up the road just outside the park until we came to the edge of the reservation that was signed for "tribal members only." Forry turned around and all of a sudden we had company on the road --

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot to eat out there, but these horses didn't look in too bad a shape...

We're on the bottom land near the Verde River, which means there's a lot of brush around that's actually pretty verdant.