They are wonderful. I sat on our porch every morning to read the paper and one would come, sit in the Magnolia virginiana (Sweetbay magnolia), and sing to me. Such a joy.

Between my birdbaths and feeders our house/yard has been full of birdsong since spring. My granddaughter (8) loves identifying them using the Cornell Merlin app. She is actually starting to id some without looking at this point . Not so much birdsong now because I took down all the feeders except the suet ones. Saw one undesirable rodent, so that was it. Pretty quiet here now. I am so sad.

there was a time in the 70s when i'd walkt to the eden seminary campus in webster groves, mo & listen to a pair of competing mockingbirds. they'd start crooning around 11 p.m & continue long into the night.

sparrows are usually the bullies around here but this i was overrun by house & purple finches to the point that most other birds avoided my feeders. i added feeders to other areas but a lot of birds stayed away. there's a vacant acre behind me & they drifted that way. the robins stayed but they mostly patrol the ground. a lone mockingbird & a pair of cardinals are back. usually around this time tufted titmice, juncos, & flickers will show up.

in the mid 90s i was the carpenter general foreman on the creve coeur lake bridge which is on the missouri river migratory flyway & kept a bird log. i recorded over 250 species. i even sighted whooping cranes on 2 occasions. that was the first time i sighted a white pelican migration. geese fly in their military formation vees pelicans ride the thermals so move in a mob formation swirling in big loops moving in a general direction. sometimes when turkey vultures were above i'd call my foemen on the radio & ( jokeingly ) tell them to get the guys moving cuz the vulters were circling.

White pelicans! I would love to see those swirling and riding the thermals. I have only seen brown pelicans on the Outer Banks in NC-no swirling at all that we saw. Too bad. Have never seen a whooping crane either-lots of blue herons here in Northern VA, though.

Love your turkey vulture story. :-) . We do have those. And Bald Eagles. We used to have a family of Black American vultures. They are very cool. We had a three acre remnant of an ancient Oak forest behind us where they hung out. Went downstairs one morning and there were two of them on the patio. Fairly large. I went out to shoo them away. LOL. They were not about to budge. I looked up to the roof and there was the third. I told them they were welcome to stay and I would keep the dogs in, not that they would be intimidated, and I backed into the house. They reminded me of Canada Geese who are equally intimidating. Unfortunately, our dear elderly neighbor who owned those three acres died, her daughter and sisters sold to a developer who clear-cut the entire three acres (which he had said he would not do). Thank goodness I had planted a lot of trees in our backyard, so except in winter, we cannot see the huge (9,000 square foot) ugly (seriously) houses there now. No more vultures, no more deer (wonder where our eight point buck went), no more foxes, no more anything.

At least we still have our other birds.

they common on the mississippi, missouri, & lower illinois rivers. i would think along the lower ohio as well. i'm just south of st louis 5 miles west of the mississippi & have seen them flying over my house twice. eagle populations have risen along these rivers as well. from st louis people would drive to clarksville mo or grafton ill. now they're all up and down the rivers. i saw one in tower grove park and shaw's garden in mid st louis & several along the meramec river near my house. at the tiny river outlook bellerive park at broadway you can glass eagles on the illinois side.

I am hopeful that I will hear & or see a mockingbird here. I am within their northern range with sightings all around me but they are considered rare.

What a fabulous array of birds you have seen!

last night when i let the dog out around 9 there was a great horned owl sitting on my fence. with a near full moon he stood right out. i have an owl call & have had conversations with owls when i hear them at night. this morning there wa a broad winged hawk on the fence. he is probably migrating south.

We had a Great Horned Owl in an oak next to our deck years ago. He let me just watch him for a bit. Then, he took off toward one neighbor's property and then came back over me and along the woods (the ones that are no longer there. Sigh. The coolest part of it was that he didn't make a sound, totally silent as he flew. It was magical.