Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Backyard Nature with Joel


Well, I'm now done dog-sitting and I'm back at my house on Highland Avenue. It's been rainy and cloudy all Spring Break. But, this morning I got up and was looking out the window and saw all these creatures in about 5 mins. I would've taken pictures (they were only about 5-10 feet away through the window) but I believe my camera was stolen by the airlines coming back from Miami. So, you'll have to take my word for it.

The Mockingbird. A very common TN bird. Very playful and fun to watch (much like a Kingbird.)

The Squirrel is the obvious frequenter of our yard. They are all over the place here in Cleveland, TN.
Next is the Carolina Wren. Our neighbors own a few birdhouses and these wrens occupy one of them.
Blue Jay. These birds are very aggressive but incredibly skidish. A brilliant example flew down and landed right by the window. What incredible blue! I think there's some Prentice blue in there somewhere.
I saw the female Cardinal first. She hopped around the corner with her brilliant red beak.
Not far behind was the male Cardinal. What a pair.
This was the new species I have never seen before, much less in our yard. At first I thought it was an oriole but after some research, I found it is the Spotted Towhee. A very pretty bird. You might call it a Luxury Robin.
The Spotted Towhee, pair of Cardinals and the Carolina Wren all appeared at the same time

3 comments:

Edie said...

Joel, I'm proud of you for IDing all those birds. I've never seen the Carolin Wren, so you're ahead of me there. The rest I've seen but not all in ND. Wish we had cardinals and I haven't seen a towhee for years. We need to go birding together sometime.

laura said...

Snow and flowers all in the same backyard! Incredible!

Dave said...

Joel, you're the renaissance man. Love the "luxury robin" I've got some bird watching planned for next weekend...the dinosaur ridge "Hawkwatch" raptor migration.
http://hawkcount.org/siteinfo.php?rsite=123&PHPSESSID=216502e040f28a1bc8b69174ef46b10c