Laurelca, I think your sparrow is a Golden-crowned.

There was one huge turkey in the back yard today but couldn't get but a couple of pictures that weren't too good. Besides the gobble, gobble, gobble they make a clucking sound I have heard from the toms, especially when they are alone.

Bird people! I went to MOSI today and while I was concentrating on the butterflies, I had a bird opportunity arise. I was walking around hunting caterpillars when I saw a bird sitting on one of our benches. I stopped, hid behind the trellis that's covered in Pipevine, and got my camera out while not staring directly at the bird. I think it's a Brown Thrasher.



FYI, my pictures aren't getting better, it's my new camera! In what I found to be interesting, I saw this bird again a bit later. This time, it was under the Pipevine trellis where I had been hiding. I saw it pecking at something on the ground. Now, I had already searched the Pipevine for caterpillars and didn't find any, but I got all panicked thinking it had found one. But when I went over, I saw that it had been picking at Coontie seeds. What's neat is Coontie seeds are poisonous. The orange coating on them, at least, is poisonous. But it looked like the bird had been pecking it off because the ones I saw had most of the coating removed. I thought that was really cool. And then I felt bad for scaring it away. I'm sure it came back when the human disappeared.

Cool shots Melanie! Right you are it's a Brown Thrasher. Aren't their eyes cool? Interesting about the coontie seed.

Fantastic photos!

Your photographic eye and that new camera are getting some very nice shots!!!

Melanie, terrific photos of that Brown Thrasher ... they look like paintings! Interesting that it was pecking at the coontie seeds! They do eat caterpillars, spiders and other insects (insects make up the majority of the Thrashers diet) but they also eat berries, nuts and seeds. I used to see tons of them a few years ago but now they are sporadic around here. I love watching them scatter leaves with their bills to get at whatever it is beneath the leaves that they want to eat. I put dehydrated mealworms in my feeders and they even eat those! These photos below are from 2011, an adult will a bill full of meal worms that it collected on the ground beneath a feeder and an adult with a treat for it's baby who is almost the same size as mama or papa ... juveniles have blue eyes.

Lin, did you notice in your second photo the juvenile has a blue eye? You may have known that the juveniles have blue or grey eyes but I didn't. I did some checking and only found 2 references to that. I was quite surprised to see All About Birds does not make any mention whatsoever and they don't have any juvies in the photo gallery so that one could see the blue eyes.
https://sora.unm.edu/sites/def...
http://georgiagirlwithanenglis...

Thanks for the kudos, folks! I plan to be quite the competitor in the photo contest this year so you've been warned!

That's so neat that the eyes change color on the Brown Thrasher. Wonder why that is? Also, I love the picture with all the mealworms in his mouth. Greedy little bird!

I did something to my camera this morning and screwed up the settings again!! I went to the menu screen and fiddled with settings trying to figure out what I'd done but I just made matters worse.
This is the shot of a Mockingbird from this morning. When I looked through the viewfinder and zoomed in, everything looked fine, the sky was real pretty and blue, the bird looked great, everything looked normal but when I clicked to take the picture the screen went white and the picture came out awful. My husband is resetting my camera as I type ... he said the ISO was way off, whatever that means.




From yesterday ...

Red-winged Blackbird & Dove ............... Brown Thrasher


Grackle & Dove .................................. Grackle

iso is the light sensitivity of film or in the case of digital cameras the sensor. for bright / day shots you want a low number iso , for dark / night shots you want a high number iso

mr and mrs bluebird ,



mr bluebird's puffy pose



and a nasty ol' brown head cowbird

Glad you got your camera working again, Lin. Love the pics.

Thank you for the info krobra, good to know about the iso on camera.

Kurt, thank you ... good to know but I'll probably forget it five minutes from now. So, at night pictures, it's a good idea to change the ISO setting to a higher number and use the flash? I think I'll go get my camera and look and see if I can find where to set the ISO; maybe if I play around with it awhile, I'll remember.

A Dove was perched at the top of the Cypress tree about an hour ago.

I would recommend auto settings unless they are coming out too light or dark , shutter speed and aperture can affect the light of the shot too.
iso is probably the easiest way to do it though , higher iso setting can be noisier / more static
longer shutter speed lets in more light but can blur if camera is not steady
lower aperture setting lets in more light but the depth of field / area actually in focus is reduced

krobra said:I would recommend auto settings unless they are coming out too light or dark , shutter speed and aperture can affect the light of the shot too.
iso is probably the easiest way to do it though , higher iso setting can be noisier / more static
longer shutter speed lets in more light but can blur if camera is not steady
lower aperture setting lets in more light but the depth of field / area actually in focus is reduced

So if you were shooting during the day and the backlight is too bright as it almost always is here in FL outdoors, then iso set low & you don't have to worry about noisiness or longer shutter speed or lower aperture right?

Love the bluebirds. Mr. Puffy.

Now how did I miss those pretty Bluebirds? Are they nesting nearby? I just love Bluebirds and I sure wish we'd see more of them down this way! Those danged Cowbirds are a nuisance but I still think the male is handsome! I'm curious about that feeder and the sideways jar, does it keep the squirrels out?

I think that jar feeder is for the squirrels Lin. Could be wrong but that's what it looks like to me.

it is a squirrel feeder Ann, but they did build a nest in a bluebird house



but have not moved in , and I have no idea why , lol



but they do hunt for food from our clothes line poles everyday

Kurt - Is that last photo a bird's eye view?