I love this time of year. I fill the feeder when we get home and have dinner on the front porch most evenings. My feeder is only about 20 feet from the porch and most birds don't mind that we are that close. They don't even mind the pups these days. I have had one hummer so far. My Dad, however, has 5 or 6 so far and he is only a few doors up.

He also had a tree full of what we thought were Indigo Buntings. I will have to check out this other one you have linked to though as they look very similar.

Great blog Muddle!

Well, my blue grosbeaks have been back every day. Now we've picked up the rose breasted grosbeaks too! They are so pretty. I set up my video camera outside near the feeder and taped them. Alas, I have no empty bird houses left for the bluebirds. The chickadees or tufted titmouse moved into the last one. Maybe next year! No hummers yet.

While at Luther Glass pond a few days ago, I saw a wood duck family w/6 ducklings at the upper pond. The male duck is absolutely beautiful! della

We moved in here in 1997. I remember talking to a new neighbor out in the front yard and, suddenly, I turned and saw more than twenty bluebirds together in our yard. I embarrassed myself as I ran off, saying, "I have to tell my wife about this!"

We used to have an incredible variety of birds. Eastern meadowlarks were common. We used to get cedar waxings in droves. Several varieties of woodpeckers were common, including the downy, red-headed, pileated, red-bellied, ladderback and flicker. We had (lots) more blubirds than at present, and also had varieties of grosbeaks, buntings and warblers.

It's still great. We have bluebirds, jays, cardinals, house finches, goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches, titmouses ( mice?), thrushes, mockingbirds, etc. But many species seem to have disappeared over the years. I suspect that the area has just been built out so much that they've stopped returning. (This subdivision was a farm as late as the early 90s.) I really miss the meadowlarks, and have not seen/heard one for perhaps eight years.

Anyway, we still have flyovers of sandhill cranes in late fall/winter, and we get herons and geese in the pond. All in all, its a great spot for birds.

The first year we put up a bluebird house..well let's say...the birds must have been desperate. We put it in the wrong place, but two days later, they were moving in. I think they had at least 4 babies. I saw the whole family taking a bath in our bird bath. Last year, they would start a nest and be kicked out by a chickadee. They finally did make a nest and when they had left, we opened the box and there was a dead chickadee in it! Would they raise chickadee eggs? We put up 5 houses this year. The bluebirds checked one out in late February and never came back. We've got 2 houses with chickadees, one with white-breasted nuthatches, and one with probably tufted titmice. The last house is unoccupied. If there's a desperate pair of bluebirds out there, we've got a vacancy! We do clean the houses out after they nest. We also have a phoebe that has been living under our deck for at least 12 years. They always come back to the same place and have at least 2 or 3 batches of babies a year. Then there's the wren that loves my hanging asparagus fern on the front porch!

Last year a saw a summer tanager (not a scarlet-no black wings) and it was awesome. I hope it comes back. My bluebirds haven't been back since the summer of 2006. Do I need to clean the old nest out of the house? I have flocks of cardinals, gold finches and doves, and the occasional hawk (the fate of my missing kitten from last summer?). I can hear the pileated woodpecker, but seldom get to see him (same with the owl and whip-or-will). I could watch the birds all day long!

I received a pocket 'bird caller' for Mom's Day one year, from the Wild Bird's Unlimited store and it makes a neat gift. It's about the size of a calculator and you can buy various 'regional' cards that include several different species of birds. I have 2 cards, that include southern and western birds, and you press a button and the actual sound can be heard throughout our backyard.

It's fun to listen to the birds start cackling back as we sit outside and call them with this device!

I was looking out my window one day and thought I was looking at a dove, but when it moved it was plucking feathers out of a cardinal!! I ran outside and it tried to fly away with the cardinal. The cardinal came loose, but I couldn't find it. I saw the Merlin again swooping up the driveway near the birdfeeder. It was staking out my birdfeeder. I looked it up and it's also called a Pigeon Hawk. It was a dark blue gray on the top and a rosy peach on the bottom. Very slender not fat like a dove. I'm going to put my hummingbird feeder out right now! Thanks Jeff!

We’ve got eastern towhee’s which wake us up every morning. They’re ground feeders so we toss some seed out for them and the dark-eyed juncos.

We had rose breasted grosbeak for a few days last year and I’m extremely jealous of your blue grosbeak. The prettiest bird we’ve ever had at our feeder here was a scarlet tanager.

Keep you hummingbird feeder filled. They are at mine today.

I also saw a blue grosbeak at my bird feeder. I had never seen one before. It was fighting with the cardinals over food. I had to look it up on the Internet to figure out what it was. Haven't seen it since.

have visited our feeders and bird baths, but not for several years now. They came at the same time we had flocks of Goldfinches - you can't imagine how beautiful it was seeing those two contrasting flocks of birds dining together!

When we first moved into our present house, we had a Chuck-will's-widow who would wake me up in the wee hours outside our bedroom window with his very distinctive song.

We have also had some of your Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, Killdeer and Common Flickers. I guess I'd have to say the Indigo Buntings are such a vivid color that they'd have to be my favorite.