Never saw a bird eating a mushroom, though, have you? Especially when there's seed readily available. Most critters don't touch them with the possible exception of a young and foolish puppy.

No, I have not either but I have this 15" high by 6' round pile of wood chips in my back, back yard. Before I spread it next spring in my beds, I was letting it age a bit.
That's where the mushrooms sprung up. They were perfectly untouched yesterday. This morning, knocked apart. Then that is where this dove came from, near the mushrooms. If it was torn apart by a possum, raccoon, squirrel or ground hog, could the dove have sampled it? That was my thinking behind it.

Doves are ground feeders so who knows what they would ingest. I have quite a few here and rarely see them anywhere near the feeders themselves, they tend to pick at the seed that falls to the ground.

I am sitting here this evening, after watching Serena Williams win her second round match at the U.S. Open, and I am listening to a loud insect call that I do not believe I have really heard before.
It is not a common Field Cricket. Those calls kind of go up and down a little in pitch, kind of a pretty little chirping sound, soothing somehow.
It is definitely not a Katydid with that distinctive katydid, katydid, katydid. What is this insect.
It is a loud piercing kind of call, much louder then the Field Cricket. And it is of much longer duration. I am actually timing one of these calls. This particular call i timed at 7 minutes and 48 seconds with just three extremely short dips in volume. It is at it again! Quite raucous and loud!! What the heck is this thing?!?!?!

Well suddenly I said to myself, I wonder what a mole cricket sounds like?? And son of a gun, that is exactly it!!! A mole cricket. Unbelievable!! Good old google does it once again. See and listen for yourself.
I find field crickets and katydids to be very soothing but this is like somebody screaming at me from under my forsythia bush.
I invite you to check it out.

Fascinating, Bill - I have never heard of a mole cricket before! I assume this is the noise you're experiencing:



Over here in Australia we have a couple of our own cicada species that make quite the noise too, especially en masse:

https://www.australiangeograph...

Yes, that was it. It did seem a bit lower in pitch if that is the right word. It's songs went on for about 22 minutes give or take.

From what I saw on the video it had a somewhat elongated abdomen that I really did not expect to see.
It has been quiet for the last 15 minutes or so. I am assuming it was a male calling for a female. Everybody is happy I guess!!!

Bill, I am surprised you never saw any during your stint in FL, they are common here and quite a pest in turf grass. They are truly ugly bugs. I have never thought about them being noisy but we have so many noisy critters here at night it never occurred to me to figure out which one was making the most racket.

I can't recall ever having seen one.
But then again to say that my yard was more then 20% turf grass would have been very generous!
And when I took bird walks with the Fort Myers Bird Club, again, turf grasses were not regularly encountered. Maybe in my little section of Cape Coral, 40 houses surrounded and separated by little canals, I did not have any.
If he is out tonight, I am going to yell, "Hey buddy, get a room!!!"

Good news! All was quiet last evening. What a relief. That was one loud little beastie.

I was thinking about why Cape Coral did not have mole crickets. Maybe it was the soil? Most of the 11 mile by 10 mile town is dredged material. A lot of very gray colored stinky mud that I am familiar with from the salt marshes of Long Islands south shore. Plus I had a lot of beach sand mixed in. Good old fashioned beach sand. Shells and all. If I had had some organic content in the soil I would have had mole crickets.
I moved there in 2009, my house was built in 1991 I think. I do not believe that over that time the soil built up any kind of good structure to it. No hint of anything like top soil. The best I could say was tan sand.

Mole crickets also like to hang out in turf grasses, Bill. So if you didn't have much grass, they wouldn't invite themselves to your house. I don't think I have any either, (no lawn here) but of course at this time of year it gets noisy in the evenings with the cicadas. I'm beginning to appreciate our new fancy, double-pane windows much more these days. I've been missing the sound of the birds, wind swishing in the bamboo and little singing tree frogs. But I do NOT miss the loud, incessant call of those darned cicadas.

Mr. Bunny showed up again last evening, probably because I was going around like the alfalfa fairy, giving my yard a 'feed' of alfalfa pellets since we're currently banned from fertilizing.

I understand. Noise at a bad time is really disappointing!
But I thought that I had heard a lot of different 'natural sounds' in my lifetime but that cricket, Holy Cow!!!

Our lawn service uses organic materials and fortunately I have not dealt with mole crickets. My next door neighbor does DIY lawn care and they always have issues, chinch bugs out front and mole crickets in the back yard. Now I am wondering which noise I can attribute to the MC's.
p.s. I am not a fan of turf but it makes a good surface for the dog to run and play on.