Yardbirds

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After a very quiet spell, birds are starting to return to our yards.

White-winged Doves are once more perching in our trees and the other day we had the first visit in weeks by a Northern Cardinal. It was good to have one of these beautiful birds brightening up our yards again. We've missed them!

Two Northern Mockingbirds visit several times a day every day, sometimes coming to our suet feeders and sometimes to eat from our American Beautyberry.

They usually ignore our presence on our deck but when I raised my camera towards this one, it gave me a very stern look.

We see the occasional adult male Ruby-throated Hummingbird but females are now much more numerous at our feeders and our plants. So I assume that most of the adult males have already headed south.

Mixed in among the females are a couple of young males, showing just a splash of red on their throat.



Butterflies are much less common than they were all summer but we have been seeing a few Clouded Sulphurs. (At least that's what I think they are!)

Bees have taken a liking to our esperanza blooms. Oddly, though, they don't go into the flowers. Instead, they walk around the outside of each flower's base. 

Note:
On Sunday my foot had recovered enough for me to spend a couple of hours in Bear Creek Park. I'll write about what I found there in my next blog posting.
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