At the top of the tree part 1.....

Most of last week was spent in Lindale, Texas visiting my sister and her husband.  She has several porches on her house and I spent a lot of time in the mornings watching the bird activity at the top of her Bradford Pear tree near the end of the house while drinking my morning tea.  She was afraid the tree might be dying because it had no leaves at the top, but as you can see in the photos there are lots of buds on the branches.  The birds just love to perch on this tree.  I think I counted at least 13 different species enjoying this tree in the time I was there.

 I discovered that birds in eastern Texas are not a lot different then birds in southern Indiana, but that doesn't stop my enjoyment of them!  I believe these little sparrows are Chipping Sparrows.  They came every day in small groups.

 A pair of them.

 I think this is an Eastern Wood Pewee....not sure.

Not sure if this is another of the Chipping Sparrows or something else.  It got really hard to tell at times.

 I had a lot of help with my bird watching from Buddy......but he thought it all was pretty boring.

Another helper.....I can't remember his name!

 A Goldfinch

 House Finch male......I saw a pair of them on another day.

 A pair of House Sparrows.

 A Junco

 The Mockingbird.....State bird of Texas.  He really felt he ruled this tree and I have more photos of him to post later.

 No idea what this little sparrow is.....maybe a Savannah?  

 More of  the Chipping Sparrows....they were so cute.

 A Wren........seems plainer then my Carolina Wren, but has the white eye stripe.....is it a Bewick's Wren???  Often the birds were so high up, it was hard to photograph the details.

 My absolute favorite bird of the week was the Yellow-rumped Warblers.  I see one on a rare occasion at home, but here they were in this tree off and on all day long!  I had so much fun taking its photo!  I probably shot hundreds of photos of it.  I never realized that warblers would sit there like that.  At first I kept thinking it was some sort of gnat-catcher because it sits just like the pewees and phoebes and such.

One of the few shots I got showing its yellow rump.  It spent most of the time in an upright position near the top of the tree.

I have more tree-top sitters that I will save for tomorrow.  Might as well stretch out these photos for a few days!