Nice, annie! Love the Redbellies.

Had a new visitor to our yard/feeders yesterday. Have never seen a Mocking Bird in this neighborhood. Hope it stays around, I can't wait to hear it's song

same lake, 20 minutes later

Love the swan!

Dear Mother Nature: It is now the middle of April. APRIL ! Could you please get your act together ? Sincerely, Michigan.

I shared this in a post last year, but it's one of my favorites. Hope no one minds seeing it again.

Igmd_gaz, one of the things I really missed about our old neighborhood after we moved to where we are now was the mockingbirds. We had one that did an excellent mimic of the neighbor kid's always loudly blasting car stereo right down to the booming bass!

Terrible picture, but the number of gold finches hanging around is insane. Shouldn’t they be in the woods building nests or something? Don’t know if you can see all the yellow dots in the cherry tree.

i also found the first “babies” of the year.

Gold finches are late nesters, They breed in mid-summer. It is thought that they sync with the blooming and seed setting of thistles. Thistle seeds are regurgitated to feed their young. Thistle blooming in the eastern US is shifted a bit from bloom time in western zones and gold finches in these zones also shift their nesting time accordingly.

Wow, thank you for the information. Very interesting!