Thanks for not being mad Ms. Jean ,i do get overeager sometimes and totally miss stuff. Love your sunny bottom birdie. I think those are great pictures! That's definitely the little bird i have been seeing all week. They are fun to watch because they are so quick. They are really hunting the grass for bugs i guess because they are constantly on the ground flashing their little yellow bottoms :-) Thanks so much for the pictures. Awww Brenda, you dont have the little fluffy vacuum cleaner wrens? They have so much personality and are so much fun to watch. They are so naughty too :-) i just love love love them! They follow all the other birds around and see what they are interested in and then they start liking it too. That of course makes the other birds mad so then the chase begins and it looks like a game of peek a boo because they are so small and fast the other birds can never catch them! LOL....If one bird likes a nest box then the little Carolina wren likes it. If somebody hides food then the little wren eats it. If somebody is guarding a certain tree then that is the tree the wren wants to be in. If somebody likes guarding a vine then thats the vine the wren wants to be in, and on and on and on. They are so mischievous and fun to watch , i laugh all the time at their antics. They are just so naughty and cute. Wish i could send you some but i only have one pair and i would surely miss them just to much. They even pick the bugs off of our cars and every bug off every hanging plant too. Yep they are just so wonderful. Little reddish fluff balls with big beaks and big voices! LOL....I hope you get some, Brenda they are wonderful. I saw a male Northern flicker today and i never realized how big they are, and their beaks are huge too! Lol...I never ever want to make one of them mad. So pretty though and very shy. I have always heard them but never saw them. Very exciting for me to finally put a real face (and beak) to that wild call they have. He hung on the very tip of a branch to pluck dogwood berries and the northern mocking bird that guards that tree didn't mess with him either. I dont blame him! LOL...Bonnie

Sorry to hear about your fish, Ohiogdnr. Raccoons (and Herons) seem to be pretty pesty in ponds, from what I've read. There are a couple of large (50+ years) Pin Oaks on my property, and they seem to be making a lot of acorns this year. The canopy of one overhangs the deck and the acorns make a loud ping noise when they drop on it. The grey squirrels are busy burying acorns here and there. Thanks to them I'll probably be weeding out lots more baby Oak trees next year! I didn't see a hummer today, but have seen one on the Physostegia virginiana and the Cardinal Climber (Ipomoea x sloteri) in the past few days, both of which are blooming abundantly right now. The birds are going nuts over the annual Sunflower 'Mammoth Grey Stripe'. This morning I watched Titmice, Goldfinches, and even a Downy Woodpecker picking at the seeds and flitting amongst the leaves. The Goldfinches are all over the gardens, on the Agastache, Coneflower, Helianthus 'Lemon Queen', Rudbeckia, etc. Still lots of pollinators on the late bloomers - the annuals, Solidago, Aster, Monarda punctata and citriodora, Ageratina altissima, etc. but the number of butterflies has really thinned out. This is some of the obvious activity, but I bet it only scratches the surface.

Oh Ok. Well, that splains it then orrin! I am such a bad Warbler ID person. I used to think that Sparrows were difficult, but now I am thinking that the Warblers are worse. They all seem to be green and/or yellow with some brown thrown in for good measure!! Thanks again for your help. I'd have never gotten it.

Ruth, we have sparrows, sparrows, and more sparrows. Oh, and a couple of red birds and a woodpecker. Love the red birds. A couple of years back, we had Cedar Waxwings. We have not seen them since. Love your pics of the waxwings and goldfinches. Sure wish we knew what to grow to attract them to our yard again. I've never seen a real goldfinch. What do you feed them? We have all these birdfeeders and mostly just sparrows. We go down to Rockport and Port A just to see the birds but we would love to see more of a variety in our back yard.