I am thrilled! I haven't had a bird feeder in years, but my mother was a birder and we always had feeders growing up. In all those years, we never saw any of the buntings. So this year I finally decide to set out a feeder after seeing my first ever indigo bunting sitting in the grass in my yard a few weeks ago. Now, only a week later, I have up to 11! male indigos in my yard at once on a daily basis. At one point last weekend, they were joined by over 100! goldfinches, and I finally hit the birding jackpot---a male/female pair of painted buntings has been coming every day! Ever since seeing the picture of a painted in the Peterson book, it was my birding holy grail to see one. A few days ago I also saw my first Scarlet Tanager. I was absolutely shocked at how insanely bright orange red this bird was. Almost like a flying traffic cone, and it was set off beautifully by the black wings. I sure hope he comes back. It seems like every day I get a new species. Purple finch, cardinal, blue jay, mourning dove, yellow bellied sapsucker, blue grosbeak. My grandmother, who is also an avid birder for decades tells me the next one I should hope for is a Baltimore Oriole. At this rate, it seems quite likely.

Thanks, and me too..I grew up 5 miles from the ocean in Haiti. We used to have beach parties on New Year, but we're land-locked at the moment. I'm thrilled to be able to swim on Poppy Mnt, only 1 1/2 miles from here, because it's semi-deserted at the moment. DuBois and I used to drive 15 miles to swim in the Licking River or in a deserted pond over the mnt from us where we had to hike through tick-infested brush to reach it. But, speaking of oceans, this year we did skip down to FL for our anniversary over New Year and camped at Ft Desoto Natl Park but it was too cold to swim. But I could take photos of wonderful birds from the car 12-31-08, dock beside Gulf Blvd, preening American Oystercatcher, 4:19 p.m. From 12-30-08, Florida trip This is a link to the first day at Ft Desoto in my photo album. I love Kentucky warblers and other birds, but the ocean TRUMPS ALL (sigh). Slide show button on upper left corner, click F11 key for full screen http://picasaweb.google.com/rachelbro3/123008FloridaTrip#

One way is to go to photobucket.com and open a free account. Upload your pictures to that account. After uploading them hover your cursor over them and you will see a box with several lines of code. Click on the one that says 'html code' and it will be saved. Go to your gardenweb post and paste that code where you want the picture to be. You can put more than one in the post. When you preview the pictures will show up where you pasted the codes.

Pat - it's the less than clear pic..the bottom bird is standing on a dried up leaf..were very blue..called Wild Birds Unlimited & they thought they were male indigo buntings..haven't had them so wasn't sure..