Beautiful bird!! What a thrill to get to see the pair together. I came home today to find a mess by my driveway a mockingbird had made a nest & had at least 1 tiny baby & crow got the baby to the ground (dead)& mom/dad I don't know as lot of feathers all over, hope it wasn't my favorite 1 & hope it's is still alive. It must be a little ragged if it is. He?(I think males are only ones that sing) often sat just a few feet from me when I weeded & sang or just sat there.Haven't weeded for over a month so it's a mess out there, hope to get into better routine soon.Day by day for now. Mockingbird lets me know if birdbath is about empty by whizzing over my head, hummers do that too, if their feeder is empty. Jules, send some of those beauties my way, I would love to see them in my yard. I have seen a regular oriole drinking from my hummer feeder.Jan

Christine - we still have green here but nothing is growing. The few mid-season tomatoes I tried have not grown a inch in the last three weeks, and the leaf lettuce seems to be in stasis too. Odd year, the oak trees here are usually full of green buds by now.... Sharon - it's definitely cool being on the lake. The storm drains lead from the lake to a bayou of Tampa Bay so we get otters coming through too. I had a pair here last week in the back yard and I saw them come up on my lower boardwalk in the garden. There are still a ton of cherry tomatoes on the ground down there so I was wondering if they were going after the tomatoes or if they were just catching fish and eating them up under the boardwalk, something they've done regularly. Tom

Naw, I think they jus' like to eat stuff in my yard. They're here every morning now. I don't think they see me as a threat, even getting close enough to pet, but I don't want to have them pass the word that I'm a threat, so I don't reach out to pet them. We kinda jus' walk the same way, like when I'm huntin' dragonflies, real slow and methodical, so maybe they think I'm jus' one of them.

Gotta love those Red-bellied Woodpeckers. Hard to catch them in a Kodak moment. I love the white polka dots down their tails. I'm still on the hunt for a shot at one of the Red-headed variety. Woodpeckers have that infuriating habit of landing and quickly zipping to the other side of the tree. ICA, Sophie ^i^