Ann: great shots of those Brown Thrashers visiting the bird bath! It's so cute with the one dunking his head under while the other seems to be on alert, keeping watch!

Marilyn: I was a good distance away and up high on my deck ... that snake didn't look very big around until I saw my pictures once I downloaded them. I am so leery of snakes; they really scare me and we have both venomous and non-venomous snakes around here. Even the non-veneomous types will bite! It wasn't nearly as big as the yellow rat snake I saw in a backyard tree three years ago. That snake was so long I couldn't get it's entire length in one picture. It was after a birds nest in a backyard tree and the birds were going crazy screeching in distress. Here are pictures of that snake ... thank goodness for my camera's zoom lens:

They're HERE! Painted Buntings! And I didn't realize until this that an animal had just about emptied the feeder during the night (raccoons do this). I THOUGHT that I saw one early last Sunday morning, but light was too dim to be sure.

OH!!! So beautiful!!!

The painted bunting is very beautiful!!

I have to settle for my usual assortment of Cardinals, Blue Jays, Morning Doves, Robins, Mockingbirds, Blackbirds, Woodpeckers and various sparrows. All of which where here today either at the suet feeder or the seed. And the chicadees are still house shopping. Saw them checking out the birdhouses again today.

Painted Bunting, wow what a beauty!
I was taking pic of tree and got a robin too, when I downloaded I found two robins...

Linda, How fortunate that you are seeing the beautiful Painted Buntings! I haven't seen one in a couple of years and I sure miss my Rainbow Birds!

J: Great shot of the two Robins! We used to get flocks and flocks of them at our other house and it was always a joy to see those beauties digging for worms in the yard! I just love that beautiful tree in your photo ... what tree is it?

I don't know...Bradford Pear?

Could be! If it is I hope you will add that beautiful photo to the database! Bradford Pear (Pyrus calleryana 'Bradford')

I'll do that. Thanks.

Beautiful tree Jay & the Robin's red breast sure jumps out at you from all those blooms! The one sitting on the fence is easy to miss. When we got robins down in zone 10 they never had breasts so red as that. They were more rusty looking & kind of washed out. Mostly we got them doing their migration fall & spring. I didn't see any up here this year. That was odd.

Jay, beautiful shot of the tree and the robins.

I was outside early on this cloudy and dreary morning, hope we get some rain later!! Anyway, I'm still having fun playing with my new camera so here are a couple of photo's from this morning:

Really nice shots Lin!

Thanks Ann ... I'm really having a lot of fun with my new camera!

I bet you are! It's showing so much detail that I know you couldn't get before.

I'm really liking the super detail a lot! I've been thinking for months that it might be nice to have a camera with a more powerful zoom lens. My husband kept telling me that as much as I like taking pictures I should order a new camera but I didn't realize there'd be so much difference from the 20x zoom of my old camera and the 50x zoom of the new one. He knows that I'm challenged when it comes to so many different features of cameras but he said this one was identical to my old one with the exception of the more powerful zoom. So, when he was on Amazon.com one day I told him to go ahead and order it for me ... and now I'm thrilled with the closer shots I can get!

Great shots Lin!

Thanks Margaret! I decided to temporarily change my profile picture to one of the Woodpecker photo's I took this morning.