Ann, so sorry about the mocker nest. I'm sure the adults will either use that nest again or possibly build a new nest somewhere else if they haven't already done so. I think if a snake had gotten into the nest it would have chipped and drained the eggs but they'd still be there; since the eggs have disappeared I have a feeling those thug crows took them because they usually take the whole egg or baby!
I've always wondered why mockingbirds build nests so low in shrubbery and not high in trees like other birds. I know there are some birds like ground doves and ducks etc. that actually build nests on the ground but I wonder if other songbirds nest low like the mockingbirds?

Only a few pic's from my yard today; I've been busy packing and trying to get ready for our trip tomorrow. We're trailering the motorcycle up to the Smokey Mountains for a few days ... sure hope it's a bit cooler up there; we've been having low - mid 90's here already and high humidity.
Blue Jay ................................... Mockingbird ............................................ Red-winged Blackbird

Pretty photos again Lin. Have a good trip! Bo is being boarded? Is he all healed up from the snip, snip?

I know we have lots of birds nesting in the hedges. Some house sparrows. I am pretty sure Brown Thrashers nested in hedges last year, as well as Mockers.

Ann, We have a wonderful pet sitter and we are so grateful to a neighbor for giving us her information because she doesn't advertise. It's a couple who do pet sitting in their home full time 24/7, 365 days a year ... All Gods Animals. Her husband works full time for the county but dog sitting is her full-time home business every day! She only keeps dogs at their home, she has a partner who goes to people's homes to tend to cats and other types of pets. Their children are grown and married so it's only her and her husband; their last dog died about 2 years ago. She has some dogs that only come for the day (doggy daycare) and others that are long term stays when the owners are on vacation. They have a really beautiful home in a country-like setting and they treat the dogs like family, letting them have full run of the house! Sometimes she will have four or five large dogs and a couple of small ones at the same time but her house is spotless ... I don't know how she does it!! They have a large tall (@10') fenced in area off their screened lanai where the dogs go for playtime a few times a day and they sleep inside the house at night. Bo absolutely loves it there and has a few favorite playmates! We checked out a local boarding place (a national company) and we were not comfortable with it at all. The dogs were all kept outside in cement kennels, cold in winter (when we took the tour it was freezing!) and I'm sure hot in summer ... we knew it was not the place for our boy. Yes, Bo is all healed from his neutering surgery and he's doing great! I am so grateful to you for telling me about those soft recovery cones!

Sounds like Bo has his own vacation resort. Good that he's all healed up; he'll be ready to play & have a grand time with the other boarders. How wonderful that you found such a great place for him for when you guys go on trips.

Really enjoying the wonderful pics everyone is posting.
We had an unusual visitor yesterday. A lone wild turkey was standing under the feeder. I didn't see more of the flock anywhere. There use to be quite a large flock in the woods behind the house but they never ventured into the yard and I didn't think they were back there any more. It would be nice if a flock has taken up residence in the woods behind us again.

Nice Holly!

We have a lone female here. This is the second year she's here but we never see another, just her. I thought they all lived in flocks?????

Technically, these are not backyard birds since they weren't in anyone's backyard. This was at the Los Angeles Arboretum. These mallards were expecting to be fed but we had nothing. (The powers-that-be don't want people feeding the wildlife anymore.)

Doesn't matter a bit they weren't in anyone's backyard Kelli; they are beautiful & thanks for sharing those great photos.

flaflwrgrl said:Doesn't matter a bit they weren't in anyone's backyard Kelli; they are beautiful & thanks for sharing those great photos.

Hi everyone! As some of you may know, I am a butterfly person, not a bird person. But I had a cool bird experience today at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Tampa where I volunteer in the butterfly garden.

I was coming out of the lab and saw something bright green in the trees. And it was a bird! So I sped up and went to take pictures. There were five of these obviously tropical-looking birds. Dad just went Google crazy and thinks they are Nanday Parakeets but please chime in with your opinions as we are not bird people (although Dad knows which ducks are which but that's because he used to hunt them).






When I got home, I was picking food for the caterpillars and heard this awful pecking sound. I knew the woodpecker was at it again but it took me a while to find him - because he was pecking on my neighbor's house! Dad and neighbor Jim were talking about it the other day. Apparently, the woodpecker (Red-Bellied, I think?) pecks the aluminum and scares the bugs out, then eats them. It was just so loud! Louder than when they hit the telephone poles!

WOW Melanie, Those Parrots are really something. Would they normally live in your area or do you think they escaped from somewhere?

I was reading up on them just now and apparently they escaped from the pet trade and were first sighted in the area back in 1969. And now they've pretty much moved in. One of the problems with Florida - it's just too hospitable! Plus, we have a lot of stupid people who buy pets and then change their minds and let them go in the wild. A lot of counties are now hosting "Pet Amnesty Day" where you can bring an exotic pet and they will re-home it for you. No kidding - my brother was driving in our neighborhood (suburbs) a few years back and found an Old World Veiled Chameleon running across the street! Luckily, we had raised a Bearded Dragon before so we were sort of prepared for to take in another lizard. We tried to see if anyone was missing him (because they are not cheap pets) but never saw anything so we built him a cage and he lived with us for the next two years until he died. Fortunately, these Nanday Parakeets don't seem to be invasive and don't appear to be harming the native ecosystem. But they sure are loud! Oh, and FYI, one of them was eating those yellow flowers in the picture.

There is a large flock of parrots in San Fransisco. There was a documentary made about them and one of their caregivers quite some time ago you can Netflix the documentary Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.
Here is a short Utube video about the documentary
http://www.newvideo.com/docura...

Out here in the canyons of Malibu, parrots live among the sycamore trees. I think they nest in the tree cavities. I don't know where they came from but they seem to be here to stay. Big Sycamore Canyon burned last year and they seem to have moved out of there, at least for a time. This spring we saw them in Malibu Canyon for the first time. I don't know if they are spreading or have relocated from Big Sycamore Canyon. We like to see them but don't know what their impact is, if any, on native birds.

Holly: Great shot of the visiting turkey! That is just so cool; I'd love to have some acreage with a lot of wildlife.

Kelli: Oh my goodness, I love that shot of the mallard pair; most folks really love the male mallard with his pretty green head but I think the female is just beautiful. We see mallards in the waterway behind our house quite often and I just enjoy when they swim by. I really should stop listing the subject of these threads as "Backyard Birds" when I start new ones because I take pictures of not your normal birds too; many like Eagles, Osprey, Ducks, Hawks, Herons etc. that don't visit backyards, LOL. I say .... if it has wings and flies, post away. We love the photo's!

Mellie: Those are such cool shots! And, I agree they are Nanday Parakeets (a/k/a Black Hooded Parrot) which are now found in a few counties around Florida. When my mom was alive she lived in the Fort Lauderdale area and they were all over her neighborhood. It was fun to watch after a rain, when puddles would form on the roads there would be flocks of them bathing in the water! They are considered invasive but such cool looking birds.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
http://legacy.myfwc.com/bba/do...

I love your photo of the male Red-bellied Woodpecker on your neighbor's roof too! They sure can be loud!! My next door neighbor is a pilot and sometimes after very long flights she likes to sleep in and it drives her crazy when the woodpeckers make a racket on her roof. I told her they are drilling for bugs. They sometimes drill at the aluminum roof of our screened porch and it really is very loud but I love em'!

Well, we dropped our Bo off at the pet sitters @ 8:30 this morning and then finished packing the truck and headed north @ 9:30. We didn't go interstate this trip but decided to go state highways and back roads. We've seen some gorgeous scenery, stopped around 5 O'clock this evening and are spending the night here in Milledgeville, Ga and will leave early in the morning for Tennessee and the Smokey Mtns. for a few days. We trailered my husbands motorcycle and are hoping it's not too hot to do some riding through the mountains. In central Fla. we've been having low to mid 90's already and it's been so humid. It was hot when we arrived here in Georgia today too ... hope to get some photo's to share in the next few days.

Melanie, I was just reading the same article you found as well as a few others. Yep, Nanday parakeet but you already know that. They aren't invasive - yet. It's that old, just wait a while, story especially here in Fl. In Hobe Sound, where we used to live, there were flocks of Monk's parakeets & they are breeding & moving north -- originally in Fl. down near Miami way. They sure can be noisy! And they would build nests on the lights on the sports fields --- not a good thing to do.

Yes, that is a red bellied woodpecker. It may not be pecking to bring the bugs out. I've read several things that say they hammer on metal b/c it makes a nice loud noise & that's all the better for announcing their territory. Warning other males to stay away & also to attract a female.

I have mobs of photos from my brothers backyard at Bramston Beach, North Queensland, where I been photographing tropical birds and butterflies for 10 days. Bear with me.

This is the Indian Mynah: it was introduced early last century as a tick bird for cattle. It has spread massively in Australia. As with all these introductions, the birds preferred native insects. It is a type of starling and also outcompetes native birds for tree hollows for nesting. They are gradually moving in on my island here in the south too, alas.

Thanks for the info, Lin! I was just so shocked to see something that looked like it should be at Busch Gardens instead of in the butterfly garden. I'm glad I got those pictures before me and the other guests apparently scared them away.

Ann, my dad and our neighbor Jim were watching the woodpecker pecking the aluminum and eating the bugs as they came flying out so he's got that tactic down. I don't know what he was doing today. When I got too close, he flew over to the closest oak tree and settled in there. If he was trying to get attention, he definitely got it! So loud! And you know, one of those Nanday Parakeets yelled at me when I walked under the tree it was on and that thing was super loud, too.

See, butterflies are nice and quiet. I must admit, when I walk around the gardens and the birds make too much noise, I have a tendency to yell back at them. One of these days the museum guests are going to think I'm crazy or yelling at them. I just have a hard time not talking to things in nature even if (maybe because?) they can't talk back!

How is it that I have missed this thread? I love seeing bird pictures! I also love sharing bird pictures! All of you have posted fantastic photos, and I thank you for sharing them! It's very exciting to see pictures of birds that I've never seen in person.

Here is my new one from today, which I had never seen before. It's a Western Kingbird.



Got a picture of a pretty turkey from my family room window a while back. We have lots of turkeys here. Sorry this isn't from this month, but it's the closest I've been to one to get a good picture, so I decided to share it.



I've had about 5 or 6 Lazuli Buntings eating seed here for the past couple of weeks. I love them!



I'm not sure if these are Goldfinch, or Lesser Goldfinch. This was taken a couple of months ago, but until a week ago, they were still swarming the thistle sock. Looks like they headed somewhere else to have babies, since I've only seen 3 or 4 a day since then.



I need to get some pictures of the Tree Swallows, but I think it would easier to take a video of them. They don't sit still very long. They seem to have almost no fear of me, which is fun! We put up 7 houses for them, and we're hoping that they will keep the wasp population in check this year. So far, they are doing a good job. We also have Bluebirds that are nesting here, along with a Robin who built her nest in the tree outside my office window.