More pictures from May 6th!

Though I spent most of the day taking pictures of the Palm Warbler I also saw some other birds.

The Green Herons are back, I saw 3 today.

White-Throated Sparrow

There were lots of White-Throated Sparrows in the yard today. And I think that the bird call I have been trying to pin down belongs to them. But the problem is that the calls they have on allaboutbirds.org and what I keep hearing arent exactly the same. Its like the White-Throated Sparrows in the area have their own version of it. I plan on trying to find a way to take the audio recordings I have of the call and cleaning them up focusing in on it and posting it.

Here is our Magnolia Tree in bloom.

Female Northern Cardinal

Turtle! I swear, there is a turtle in this picture.

Red Squirrel

Palm Warbler

I spent today enjoying the yard and the sun and the birds. I spotted a little bird in the yard and was trying to figure out what it was. I kept over looking the Palm Warbler because of its name but then decided since it was the only bird that resembled the one I was seeing that I would look up its info. turns out the Palm Warbler, despite its name, migrates north to the bogs in northern Minnesota and central Canada for the summer and spends its winters in Central and South America.

And here is a video I took of the Palm Warbler

The start of May, one last snow storm

Luckily for me the snow storm yesterday stayed south east, which was not very lucky for anyone in SE Minnesota and got 18 inches of snow. Today however it started snowing here, it stuck to the ground for a few hours but has melted away. And right now as I look outside it seems the snow has stopped for the moment.

Here are some pictures from this week and today.

Pussy Willow

Great Egret

And just in the last hour I was looking outside and saw a pair of Mallards in the yard feeding on some bird seed.

And then they mated.

And then they both wiggled their butts and flapped their wings and wandered off.

End of April, but not the end of winter

So we hit 70F for a few days. It was wonderful! But I was exhausted from work to get out and do much yard work.

Here are some pictures of the yard. We took the hay off the roses, I think we have lost quite a few.

I am pretty sure this is a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher

A Yellow-rumped Warbler

Red-bellied Woodpecker