Filled 'er up to the top and ho lee chit them fuggers are comin' in by the flocks. Some I haven't seen before . Cool.

Crows are tryin' to muscle in tho'.

Time to dig out some wadcutters for the Python !

Fuuk the neighbors it's noon.

A bird feeder is great entertainment with a good pellet rifle!

I have 2 outside the kitchen window and enjoy watching the birds. The area that I live in is where John James Audubon roamed and collected his specimens for his drawings. We have lots and lots of birds of many types.

One of these feeders is metal and pretty much squirrel proof. Last week in the late afternoon I heard the metal one making a loud clanging sound and went to look. It was a big whitetail doe raring up and kicking it with her front paw and then eating the fallen seeds off of the ground. I just let her have at it till she mosyed off.

Yep

I have to dig out my copy. Forgot I had it.

https://www.amazon.com/Birds-Virginia-Field-Identification-Guides/dp/1591930707

I would expect rose-breasted grosbeaks are a given, they return in droves from the Tropics this time of year, nest inside woodlands. Males are black and white with rose-colored bib, females are brown like big sparrows. Grosbeaks are close to robin size.

Last week on the coast there were thousands of indigo buntings everywhere, likewise coming up from the Tropics. There are so many indigo buntings that you could walk from East Texas to Nova Scotia in summer and never be out of earshot of a singing male. Males are an intense dark blue (a huge UV component in their color makes 'em look brighter), first year males a blotchy blue and dark brown, females dark brown, look like small sparrows.

If you put out orange halves (usually pressed onto a nail sticking out of a tree or branch) you will get orioles and catbirds

Beautiful time of year in WVA I'll bet

We’ve got beau coup of the grosbeaks. Always see them in pairs like the red birds.

Haven’t seen my two gobblers and several hens for a long while now.

Years back I planted 6 Live Oak trees and they’ve really taken off. Each one has a mockingbird nest in and they’re always occupied. One Ole Gal will knock your ball cap off when trimming beneath that tree. If she weighed ten lbs., I’d wear a motorcycle helmet when around that tree.

Lots of resident doves and several flocks of Canadian geese are nearby. The geese fly over my place every evening right before dark, very vocal. In the winter I plant rye and oats along the back of the property and geese come regularly for that.

Got several owls nearby that get tuned up most nights but especially so when there’s a full moon.

Egyptian geese are rapidly increasing here, seen 'em first maybe five years back, prob'ly gonna be the next PITA waterfowl.

The continuing decline of our nation

Don't get me wrong, I don't hit every bird that comes to feed. What I consider trash birds get the hit.

Anything non-native is fair game.

Anything else its best not to brag on.

Saw several.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ros.....69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Remember the ivory-billed woodpecker frenzy some years back, lol/ I think it was more up in the Cache River area of Arkansas.... but I think the last true sightings were in the Atchafalaya Basin many decades ago now.

I took the 2004 (?) White River one seriously, ya its easy to rag on "Scientists" but as a lifelong birder I believe the three (??) eyewitness accounts by the original discoverer and the two Cornell University guys. It'd be just about impossible to misidentify a pileated as an ivory bill. I don't need the video.

I think the Cache River sighting a few years earlier was by a Grad student turkey hunting who had a pair right in front of him.

IIRC ivory-bills were about like parrots in that they could live for thirty years pretty easy. If those sighting I mentioned were legit, very likely the same bird, prob'ly lost the female by the second sighting.

Hardly mattered anyway, with so few birds the species was already lost.

Others' MMV.

Listen to the song on that link.

Pretty soon you'll start hearing it in the forest canopy, described as sounding like a robin that drank too much coffee

https://www.audubon.org/news/possib...-footage-breathes-life-extinction-debate

short videos, for sure. I would like to believe there are a few left. Cuba was thought to be a possible refuge area for a long time.

Tks for the link.

You probably already read the 2016 blog from the two guys in Cuba. Pretty sad.

This along with an old nesting cavity.....

https://www.audubon.org/news/day-12-screaming-absence

How about taking and posting some pics. This thread is useless without pics!

was on my patio this afternoon.........

got buzzed by a Hummer.........

He said ..'WTF' where's my feeder ?

Its up & full now........but we've had 38* nights ??

Awww leave them birdies alone.

Non native....ha! Just like the rest of you white bastards!


All yer gonna do is make your cat lazy.

Our birds are crazy for suet. It’s the bird magnet.

Kid, there’s a story about these in the book “Tales and Lore of The Big Thicket “ in east Texas . According to the book a newspaper editor was a bird lover and had frequent articles on these rare birds .

One day a blue bibbed coveralls wearing gent came into the newspaper office and threw a dead one on the editor’s desk and asked him, “Is this what you’re looking for?” Told the editor that he knew where lots of them were but wanted mega money to tell where they were.

You mentioned sightings in the Atchafalaya Basin. A man of some reknown, C. C. Lockwood, has a studio close to my home. If anyone currently would know, C. C. Would know. I’m gonna pay him a visit and ask him about the Ivory Billed sightings. I’ll note back what he tells me.

Google him up and look at some of his work. It is outstanding. I have two of his books.

we feed birds year round in TX and AK.

Lots of buntings here in TX at the moment.

lol, I had a feeling we might "know some people together" as they say in the swamps. I don't know Lockwood, but am well acquainted with the lad who wrote the foreword on his book Louisiana Wild. makes me want to get a copy!

Pick up “Around The Bend “. His trip from the headwaters of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.

C.C. Started his photo career in the Atchafalaya Basin back in the 60s. He’s much like the celebrated Fonville Wayans who started his career as a wedding photographer. Fonville’s pictures of Louisiana are legendary. Both were and are humble men.

I have some of Fonville’s works.

So.... its like that eh?

Dude, you're gonna lose........

I was fortunate to see and photograph this Painted Bunting last Sunday in Coloma, Michigan. They are quite rare this far north.

Cool. Checking several boxes there, Denny.

Michigan? That was a rare bird, congrats 😎. Can’t throw a rock in the Texas Hill Country right without hitting a painted bunting, seen my first 1st year (all green) painted bunting on territory today, older males have been here for about ten days already.

The bird in your photograph is of course at least two years old, prob’ly made that same misguided journey last year too, and if he ain’t from the Florida population he’ll prob’ly be in the Baja to moult in August.

I should look for a photo. Eight years back I was helping a guy from Oklahoma put little geolocators on Purple Martins. He also put em on Painted Buntings, about 25.

The following spring another guy I know was on the coast for a spring migration fallout, took a photo of a painted bunting wearing one of that guy’s geolocators. What are the odds?

Our bluebirds in East Texas have already raised their first clutch and the female was hauling in new nesting material last week end. I’m curious to see how many clutches they’ll raise this year. I put the nest box up one evening around 4 pm and they were scoping it out before dark that day. We’ Had one painted bunting come through but the indigo buntings showed up by the hordes three weeks ago as previously noted.