Trina

My Spotted Towhee...comes around several times every day, always from the southeast.  Perches and bounces around my sumac grove, works his way to the ground cover, drinks at one of my birdbaths, nibbles on peanut/suet chips that the woodpeckers have left on the ground and hops on over to the mulch area behind my veggies.  Pretty funny - I know his MO!  I'd never seen this bird in my yard before this year.  I heard his distinctive call weeks before I ever saw him.  I submitted an audio recording to iNaturalist and in short order had a couple of people tell me it was a Spotted Towhee. Also, I've had a noisy group of four small gray/white birds come marauding thru.  Thought they were blue/gray gnatcatchers - but NO, Bushtits.  Their gregarious ruckus is unmistakable! More newbies this year, are both a white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatch.  Both like my peanut/suet feeders as well as the peanuts in the mix I leave for my squirrels.  Guess I need to invest in an official peanut feeder now! Saw a red-tail hawk thermalling today.

A few months back there were seven white pelicans thermalling over my neighborhood street.  It took me a bet to figure out what they were, until they started banking and the sun caught their brilliant white with black wing tips.  I just gazed in awe at them for as long as I could see them. Saw a single turkey vulture thermalling over a nature center about two weeks ago. Today, it was a red tailed hawk doing likewise. What must it feel like?  Magnificent!!!