Yep,a zinnia. Just surprising to me, as, of all the seedlings I've found sprouting about, I've never had a border type annual: marigold, pansy, zinnia...till now. Had to be from a bird. I love it. Marti

Usually I don't see any during May-August. Then we start getting the males migrating through. In Sept. last fall I started having them stay a week or so before moving on. My overwintering ones usually come in Dec. and last winter stayed till April. However, my female Rufous has already left (the 13th was the last day I saw her) and with our warm weather and the Rubys migrating, I expect my male to leave soon. The reason we have banders come through our area is that they are trying to determine where our overwintering Rubys go in the summer. There are areas just north east of me that have them in the summer and not in the winter. (There are definitely breeding areas in the state.) Its really a mystery as to why - our weather is not that different. They are also not finding them up in the Carolinas or in the Southeast as they were expecting to when they started banding them. This banding project has been going on for about 8 years now. We are seeing more Rufous here in Lakeland than ever before and one guy even had an Allen's a couple years ago and one was found in Brooksville about an hour from here this winter. I love them too, takes the place of my butterfly hobby in the summer. Where are you?

I have the same question too. I live in Virginia and hundreds of earthworms migrate from my lawn to the sidewalk. This has been going on for the last two weeks. I have not placed any chemicals at all in my yard. Now.... what's really weird about this phenomenon is that I live in a subdivision and have neighbors all around me. Guess what? I'm the only one with this problem. I've checked everybody elses sidewalk and they are clear. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person with this problem. Does anyone know, please? I'm very curious to find out why this is happening. Thanks.

Thankfully, it turns out that this week is 'hard waste collection', colloquially known as the "town wide recycling project". The idea is that everyone looks through their garages and puts everything they don't want anymore out on the nature strip. Then, the rest of the street pretends to go for evening walks, but secretly is studying everyone else's stuff for a bargain. I put out some of my collected detritus a few days ago, including an old exercise bike which worked in every way, except the difficulty setting was jammed on Mt Everest; I had tried every trick I knew for unjamming it (I'd picked it up a few years ago from another hard waste week with the intent to use it to power my laptop with an alternator), but it resisted all my efforts. I sprayed with wd40, I heated the collar with a blow torch, I pulled and strained with a metre long stilson wrench. I even tried using harsh language. It was time for it to go. I also put out enough old tank stands and ex-rabbit-cages to open a pet shop. Oh yes, the rabbits got their cage upgraded - they're not ex-rabbits yet. Sure enough today most of it has disappeared. Other things had mysteriously migrated down to someone elses's pile. The exercise bike has obviously been exercising itself down the street. It was over 250m down the road, and had been cleaned up and regreased. Walking home from work on Friday I found a nice piece of tempered 6mm*600mm*900mm glass from someone's coffee table (without a scratch!) and planned to lug it home for use as a terrarium front. I was a little embarrassed about taking it, so I surreptitiously noted its location, and waited until 11pm before nipping out with Lynne to return it. We nearly got caught in the act by someone carrying an exercise bike wrapped in a tarpaulin. Luckily the street light is at the other end of the street. It's apparently illegal this year to take hard waste from someone else's nature strip. The story goes that a bunch of rather over-enthusiatic recyclers not only took someone elses' hard rubbish, but the front picket fence, which, it was alleged, wasn't actually stuck in the ground. The judge ruled in the case of the de-fence offence that the owner is not required to provide for the defence of fence. So when my surrounding two neighbours and I met yesterday afternoon we all studiously avoided mentioning hard rubbish... until someone mentioned the nearly new exercise bike they picked up half a block away that just needed a bit of elbow grease to fix the difficulty setting. If the council waits long enough before sending out the trucks there will be nothing left.