What birds do you see at your house every day?

Actually I talked about this once before, but I would love to hear other people's answers, since we all read blogs from all over the world. What birds can you rely on seeing every day in your back yard? Here in southern Indiana, I can look out my window any day of the year and see the following:
1. Cardinals
2. Goldfinches
3. House Finches
4. Chickadee
5. Titmouse

Those are probably the top 5. I also see Pine Siskins, House Sparrows, Doves, Downy Woodpeckers, White-Throated Sparrows, and Song Sparrows usually any day of the year. The other woodpeckers....Hairy, Red-Bellied, Pileated....are out there but I don't see them every day. The Blue Jay, White-breasted Nuthatch, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Carolina Wren are also out there, but don't stop by every day. And of course there are assorted "blackbirds".....Red-wing, Grackles, Starlings, Cowbirds, etc. out there, but not at my house usually. I'm sure there are many more "every day" birds here in southern Indiana, but this is my list, for my yard.

Burning questions of the bird world......inquiring minds want to know!

If doves always wear pale blue eyeshadow and pink stockings, how do you tell the boys from the girls?????? I guess only the doves really need to know :-)

Do birds poop on other birds???? I thought they reserved that for us humans! (you have to pull this one up large to see it better) Poor Cowbird....someone doesn't like you!

(I know this is lame.....maybe something more exciting will happen to post later :-)

I took a nice walk yesterday and have lots of wildflower pictures to post, but am trying to identify most of them first.

C is for Catbird, Chickadee, Chipping Sparrow, and Cowbird....and a Contortionist Red-Bellied Woodpecker

My Catibird was ready to pose for me today...actually I have two!

I haven't had a good Chickadee picture for a long time, so I wanted to post one!

The Chipping Sparrow found our brand new feeder and seems to like it despite that "strange" bird in the center.

I believe this is a female Cowbird. Whatever she is, she was willing to pose for me quite a bit.

I had to include this Red-Bellied Woodpecker because he was into strange contortions at the suet feeder....first he was all scrunched (couldn't figure what he was doing) and then he went into weird upside down head twists.

Bamboo and birds

At the house where I scared the bunnies, they have a huge stand of bamboo.....very invasive...growing and Susan took me walking through it. She was kicking over the new growths and I picked up 3 and brought them home. It is really interesting to see inside of one......all the growth is there and it just telescopes up very quickly to its full height.

Back home I've been trying to hang some feeders in new places other then my dead dogwood and see what sort of pictures I can get. This female cardinal looked pretty posing against the Cherry tree blossoms.

Having to shoot towards the house from outside does not get me good close-up shots, but this cardinal and finch were enjoying the feeder together among the pink blossoms.

The Catbird showed up and didn't stay long. He tried to hang from the suet feeder like a woodpecker which was pretty funny, because he kept slipping off. I hope to get better pictures now that he is back for the summer.

The white-breasted nuthatch always makes such a production of picking a seed at this feeder. He sweeps his bill back and forth throwing stuff out and leans way down to peer inside like that will help him find the very best seed possible.

I was surprised to have 2 Pine Siskins hanging upside down on the Goldfinch feeder. I thought that Goldfinches were the only ones that did that!

I caught brief glimpses of my first hummingbird and a thrasher, so I hope to have pictures soon! I got out one of the hummingbird feeders immediately and put it where it was last year.

Run Peter run!

I'm thinking about starting "Simple Sundays".......one picture only. I don't usually have pictures that I think stand alone without a lot of others to help support them, plus I just like posting lots of pictures :-) However, I'm going to try to simplify my Sundays by just posting one picture.

We accidentally disturbed a nest of baby bunnies yesterday, while looking at a dogwood tree that a friend wants to give me. I felt so bad about scaring them off and hope the mama finds them all! My husband managed to snap a couple of pictures as they scattered in all directions. Poor bunnies!

Pretty in Pink.....lots and lots of pink!

Trying to give aa idea of this beautiful ornamental cherry tree and how full it is and how the flowers hang in individual clumps from curved stems, is hard! In a few more days it will be sending down pink "snow" all over everything, so I wanted to post picture now before the "storm" begins.

They look like little "bridal bouquets" ready to be picked and carried.

Mouse before and after....or...The Cat Who Got A Bad Haircut

Mouse the cat has incredibly long thick fur and she is "mean" natured and won't let anyone handle her to comb it. So, when she begins trying to shed her winter fur, she gets horrible mats of dead fur all over her back. This makes her even grumpier than normal and very stressed out. That means a trip to the vet to be knocked out so they can groom her. By the time she goes each year, it usually means a shave of the belly area to shorten the fur for the rest of the summer, the legs, all the mats on the back (which gives her a patchy look) and shortening the sides. She gets really mad at me, but she is 100 % happier once it is done! But she sure looks funny :-)

BEFORE (fur almost drags the ground!)

AFTER (Summer "breezy haircut")

Baby geese everywhere....and turtles....

Tuesday I went outside just to stroll around with the camera when I noticed a pair of geese at the end of our dam.......I looked again, and realized they had babies with them! These were not born on our lake! I think they must have been born on the lake next door and then the parents walked through the woods to our lake with them. As soon as they saw me, the parents hit the water with their 3 little babes and swam to the end of the woods.

There they climbed out and walked along the grass....leaving the babies down below because they couldn't get up that high! Before I left home "mom" was back down with them and I think they must have walked around until they got past the high part, because the whole family disappeared somewhere......off to another pond, I guess.

I was headed to the wetlands to show my niece the turtles on the logs. Of course I also took pictures of other things.....oak leaves coming out and Red-wing blackbirds and sparrows in the cattails.

When we reached the lake area and the boardwalk, we realized that there were 2 pair of geese on the far side that both had babies! This was certainly my day for seeing baby geese....lots of them!

Then we watched the turtles on the logs......not as many as the previous trip, but still several batches of them.

I took this picture to show the difference in size between these two! I'm not a turtle expert, so I don't know.....is the big one a snapping turtle?

Here is his close-up! I think he is the "Grandfather Turtle" :-) He was really big. On the way back to the car was when I saw that beautiful Prothonotary Warbler that I posted as soon as I got home. It was a good day for nature.

Wow!......as always.....wow!

This bird quilt was one of my favorites and there are some close-ups in my Shutterfly albums. Taking pictures of quilts with ropes to keep you out of touching distance and 100's of other people trying to look at them and take pictures is hard, so some of my close-up's did not get fully focused. I wish that I could have stayed more than one day to really study each quilt! They are truly amazing works of art. The stories behind some of them are even more fascinating! They make wonderful desktop wallpapers if they are in the horizontal position :-)

There are 2 Shutterfly albums of quilt pictures for anyone interested in seeing them.

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0JZNnDRq3YsSA&emid=sharview&linkid=link2

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0JZNnDRq3YsRu&emid=sharview&linkid=link2