I'm on two acres in semi-rural central Massachusetts, bordering conservation land (wetlands). This is the first time I've thought about itemizing what I've seen in my four years, here. It's a long list, and I'm sure it's just a fraction! We have a pond, and keep half the property meadow. (Maybe, by some standards, the whole thing is a meadow....) I've been putting up birdhouses, lately. We see (in rough order of how interesting...) great blue herons, red tail hawks, egrets, a large flock of cedar waxwings, redwing blackbirds, barn sparrows (how do they know it's a barn?), downy/hairy/piliated/red-breasted woodpeckers, orioles, juncos, nuthatches, and the usual finches, bluejays, cardinals, yadda yadda yadda. A wood duck down the road, and I wish he'd visit. Spring peepers (I can't wait for them to come back!), leopard frogs, other various frogs and toads, garter/ribbon/maybe milk snakes, 4-toed salamanders. Turtles nearby, but not at my pond. In the pond, various snails, leeches, more frogs, infinite insects (especially mosquitoes). In the orchard, every pest an apple tree has ever known. Mice, groundhogs, rabbits, grey squirrels, flying squirrels, chipmunks. Coyotes, foxes, deer. Neighbors have seen a bear and reportedly minks, but not me. Beavers have us surrounded, but they are not my own yard. Some lovely spiders, and some plain ones too. Lots of paper wasps and various bees. More mosquitoes. In fact, mostly, we have mosquitoes. And worms. --Jonathan

I think I saw a Vulture yesterday but it could have been our resident Eagle, didn't have my binocks. It was over a favorite Vulture hang out. Gotta make a positive ID before I put it in the books. I hope my Blues are not early I'm going out of town for a long weekend next week.....

cowbirds are the only ones i know that lay their eggs in other birds nests. I get lots of red wing blackbirds here in spring thru summer. There are often juvenille cowbirds with the adult red wings. The cowbirds are bossy and pushy with other birds and take over the feeders. Lucky that the young are on their own soon after they can fly on their own and they leave out before the redwings. I put a couple of platform feeders out in a tree away from the other feeders and the blackbirds and cow birds and starlings seem to stay at the platform feeders mainly.

That's a crowded park! There sure are alot of birds in it! We had an oilspill on a river near me in December 0f 2004 and I volunteered to help clean the birds and my favorite job was cleaning up the rooms the canadian geese stayed in they were very bossy and had quite a pecking order and if they were upset about something they could really start attacking me and whoever else be it goose or person they were mad at I did not want to get on their wrong side!