I'm an avid bird watcher and I love taking pictures of my backyard birds! A few year round residents here are the Mourning Dove, Downy Woodpecker, Red-bellied Wodpecker, Blue Jay, Common Grackle, Carolina Wren ... and a regular spring visitor is the Gray Catbird!

Lovely photos Lin! I do so love the catbirds! Do you get any Brown Thrashers? We had them in winter in Martin County. They sing like angels!

Oh yes ... Brown Thrashers are year round regular's here and another of my favorites! All of these photo's were taken this year in my backyard:

To me they are just so elegant. Thanks for the photos they're terrific!

You are welcome!

Elegant and so much fun to watch too! It's especially fun to see the adults feeding their young, who are almost the same size as their parents (the third photo in the second row shows an adult on left and baby on right waiting to be fed.) The last photo up there shows an adult collecting a beak full of mealworms to feed it's baby! I laughed so hard when I saw that bird trying to pick up so many mealworms at once!

Toxostoma rufum rufum ... a wonderful bird indeed.

Love the photos Lin, especially the adult with it's beak full of worms.

Thanks! They sure make me smile!

They make me smile too! Even when they aren't in sight visually --- their very song makes me smile.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/g...

I wish we had Brown Thrashers here but we don't. At least not ever here in my yard. Fortunately I have lots of Catbirds and Cardinals. Catbirds are my very favorite birds although of course the Cardinals are so very pretty. Still, the Catbirds are really very elegant in looks so just as pretty in their own way. And so friendly and nosey about what goes on. I just love those catbirds.

I love the Gray Catbird too ... I wish it was a year round resident down here, but they are only winter visitors. They love fruit so I always add bits of fruit to the feeders and they devour the Loquats from my neighbors many trees and they even eat suet!

Nice shots, Lin. They are beautiful birds, I agree, Rita.

Tee, they are very nice birds, too bad they are not in our area. The first time I heard the Catbird before I saw it, and I thought there was a lost kitten in the bush!!

That catbird call is really something. And other times they sit and sing and honestly, that just makes me laugh whenever I hear it. More like a bunch of squakes than a pretty song but they just seem to be so pleased with the singing. Too funny.

Great pictures Lynn. I guess you only have them during the winter as we up here only have them during the summer. I really look forward to when the catbirds arrive back in my garden each spring. I know they love mealworms and they do love the suet. They were scarfing up on both when they had nestlings here this summer and were feeding. Gave me lots of fun watching the goings on. I really like that they are not shy. If you just sit still they come close and just ignore you.

My yard is just full of berry eating shrubs so the catbirds really like it here. I see them eating blueberries, servceberries, red currant berries, blackberries and grey dogwood berries here in the summer.

the catbirds too! They are funny ; sounding like kittens & sometimes like fully grown cats. I like their grey color with the black on top of their head & then that rust under their butt.

Wait a second - is that what sounds so much like a cat??? I thought it was one of our mockingbirds imitating one of the cats, no? With all the drop-offs I get around here, every time I hear it I'm up looking for a cat. Twice it has been a cat, but about 15 other times, it sure wasn't ...

Okay, Margaret, I'll have to look up Steller's jay. I really don't know what they are.

Oooo - pretty bird. I wish we *did* get them here, but it looks like they only show up west of the Rocky mountains. Looks like a blue and black Cardinal, huh?

Now, we *do* get the real live Eastern blue-bird:




(Courtesy, Wikicommons)

Sheryl --- for you

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/g...