Julie L. Cleveland

This black and white warbler is a new addition to the yard of birds. I do have other things besides birds that wander through, like a red fox or a Florida panther, but birds seem to sit still long enough for me to get photos of them. 

Our annual female turkey sighting. I don’t know where she lives of why she comes by our yard every year, but we see her once in the spring and then never again until next year. 

I had NO idea that we had cedar waxwings in Florida until a pair of them started stripping all of the berries off of the ornamental plants around or pond. This was shot through the bedroom window screen with a 300 just because I was afraid that if I went outside, they would fly off before I could get a photo. 

Whatever was in that water was  surely inviting. All of these and hundreds more robins stopped by one afternoon to have a drink at Squirrel Pub. It was proceeded by a morning of berry eating, so they may have already been a bit on the drunk side!

While he is not really very visible, this little goldfinch stood still long enough for me to take his photo. I don’t recall ever having one in our feeder before, so this was great treat.

There must have been a lot of really great bugs in this poor old oak because this woodpecker and its mate spent almost an entire day putting holes in it. They either got tired of beating on it or they got all of the bugs because eventually, they flew off to better bugs. 

While this does not do these guys justice, it captures their faces. We have a large old, gnarly pine tree in the front yard, and on every limb, there were a couple of these buzzards. I tried to capture the entire tree filled with them, but just couldn’t get them all in one shot. It was going to be our Christmas cards! Anyway, they hung around for awhile scaring the squirrels before taking off for parts unknown.