Ruby-throated Hummingbirds!

The hummingbirds finally showed up! It was exciting! last Sunday I saw my first one. I know of at least two (a male and female i believe ) that have visited the feeders.

Also some Swallows have moved into one of the bird houses.

And sadly today I came across a dead bird, not sure what kind it is. I called the DNR and they were uninterested.

No Hummingbirds yet

The weather has been up and down. I haven't seen a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird yet this year. But the Orioles have found my feeders.

And the Squirrels were hungry and started eating the blooms on the Magnolia.

One of our neighbors lets their cat out to wander.

He sat in the backyard for a while and at one point was trying to catch voles in the hay.

Pretty sunset.

Green Heron

Bald Eagle. It was being chased by some Crows and swooped down and picked something up from the edge of the marsh, not sure what it got though.

Male Cardinal (and a female blackbird)

Brown Thrasher

Black and White Warbler!

So i was having coffee out on this deck this morning before work and I saw this guy!

Its a black and White Warbler! I only got this one shot because it flew off to a different tree and kept moving around!

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.