Amazing, isn't it? I had to shed a few tears of happiness. Thank goodness for people who care!

Very kewl! Thanks for sharing Tee.

Finally a chance to post the Varied Thrush photos, there were 4 this morning. There is one without a tail, I call him stumpy, he mostly stays at the edge of the spruce tree where I throw lots of seed so that the birds can find it when it snows, he won't let the other thrushes in his area.
This is Stumpy. Click to enlarge or you will miss part of the image.


Sorry the shots aren't better, they just wouldn't sit and pose for me.



Steller's Jay in flight.

Oh my Margaret. I have never seen those. They are really handsome birds.

Oh Margaret, what a pretty bird that Thrush is ... I've never seen one before either and I love it! Wonder what happened to Stumpy's tail feathers, could he have just been born without them forming? I know juvenile birds have very short tail feathers that grow as they mature but I've never seen a bird lacking them ... he's quite unique!

They are very pretty birds indeed, I am thinking that it is a juvie from down south and he may grow feathers, if they hang around long enough we shall see.

I was walking the mangroves today looking for Beach Stone-curlews. They still elude me here.

There were some flocks of waders still around. Soon the mudflats will be mostly vacant as they wing their way off to Siberia. This is a flock of fat Whimbrels and Bar-tailed Godwits today soon to be gone north but to return in September.

(There is a Gull-billed tern in their somewhere and a Pied Oyster-catcher has it back to me in the foreground thinking it can't be seen).

I had noticed that the cuckoos had already left because I am at last picking my Cherry Tomatoes again. Thankfully my Cherry Guavas didn't ripen early this year which the Koels would have gobbled up too for the trek to cross the equator.

The Dollar Birds left last week. I always miss them because they are spectacular rollers. But soon the winter migrants will turn up as they move from the highlands to the coastal plains and islands.



This is a photo of the Orange Mangrove. Its flowers are beloved of Mangrove Honeyeaters.

Asparagus Fern. It has destroyed so much of the native ground cover of the island forests here. To get to the waders shown in the previous post, I had to walk through dense undergrowths of this highly invasive weed. You have the same problem in Florida (I think) as us. The birds eat the berry and poo it to the world. I pull out two to eight seedlings a week that appear in my garden.

We do have asparagus fern in Fl. Glen & it can take over. It has some nasty thorns if it gets above seedling status.

What do you mean by the word "rollers" when you talked about the Dollar birds?

We have mangroves but no orange mangroves. Our mangroves have not such spectacular blooms as your orange mangroves.

A few of my backyard birds today:

Juvenile Blue Jay and ............................. an adult Jay with a mouthful of peanuts from the feeder:


Red-bellied Woodpecker, male:


Red-winged Blackbird, female:

Ann, that is awful Asparagus fern is invasive in Florida. Once it gets established it is too hard to control.

Dollar Birds are rollers in that they are acrobatic in flight, that is, they flip over or tumble on the wing every now and again.

Oh, Dollar Bird is a new one to me so I had to google ... pretty little things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

http://www.aviceda.org/abid/bi...

We've been fighting Asparagus Fern (Asparagus densiflorus 'Sprengeri') here for years; I wish they would ban it and not allow it to be sold in garden centers in Florida! It's such a nuisance plant, spreads everywhere and is very hard to eradicate! Many years ago (when I was not wise to this plant) my husband built a large box @ 4 1/2 to 5 feet tall at the end of our driveway where we planted small Asparagus Ferns and some flowering plants. It was so pretty but it wasn't too many years before the Asparagus Ferns had taken over, strangled out the other plants and the seeds dropped on the ground around the planters .... we had them sprouting up everywhere. We continuously mowed down the ones sprouting in the lawn but the ones in the wooden box got so huge and so thick. When the box rotted away the plants were impossible to dig up; my husband dug around the base and then tied a heavy duty rope (one of our boat lines) around the base of the ferns, hooked the other end of the rope to the undercarriage of his big pick up truck and tried to pull it out the rest of the way ... the rope broke! Asparagus Fern is a really beautiful plant and the Mockingbirds love the berries but it is a nuisance for sure! I have it growing up in some shrubbery and I keep pruning it back every few weeks.

Awwwwwwwwwwww, those dovies all lined up together on the wire look so sweet.

Just love seeing the birds here.

I really enjoy my doves too, Ann. I hadn't seen them for awhile but once the food was put out, there they were. I was very concerned that the Cooper's Hawk had gotten some of them. Birds have such a precarious existence sometimes.

We are not sure what this particular hawk is, but we think it is a red-tailed hawk. There were actually two of them initially, but as soon as I walked outside, though I was perhaps 150' away, one of them flew away. This hawk appears to be approximately 2.5' from the top of its head to the tip of its tail and when it finally flew off, the wingspan appeared to be 4-5'. For perspective, the limb that it is perched on is about 4" in diameter. Due to the distance and the gloomy, gray skies, the picture does not do justice. Red-tailed hawks mate for life, so the two would have been mated. Perhaps they had their eye on the numerous squirrels in the neighborhood.

Lynn, I had no idea that Asparagus Fern was such a thug, in the more southern states.

Asparagus fern is not a fern at all, since it doesn't propagate via spores. It only looks like a fern. It produces berries and the seeds from these berries are spread far and wide by birds. That might explain why it is invasive.