This time of year, as birds are flying north to their summer homes, we get several birds that aren’t with us all summer long. Dear Husband pointed out the return of the towhee roughly three weeks ago.  I was surprised to find that it is still visiting,

Last week I saw a rose-breasted grosbeak at the feeder.  In past years we’ve had evening grosbeaks visit, too.

This week we have had three male indigo buntings appear.  I had always thought that the indigo bunting was a bigger bird, so we had some discussion at the breakfast table about the beautiful blue, TINY birds in the shrubs.  They are about the size of the gold finches and house finches which have returned for the summer.  Like the cardinals, it’s the males who have the beautiful plumage.  I suspect that there are female indigo buntings out there, too, but I just haven’t recognized what I’m seeing.  I’ll have to check the summer range of the buntings to see if our back yard might fall in their summer range.

We saw our first heron early in April, and an egret about a week or so later, but the rest of the flock has been slow to arrive.  It’s just as well, because we’ve had a spring with surprisingly low temperatures.  DH tells me that an egret flew by the kitchen window this morning.  There are retention ponds just to the east of our house where we might see the herons and egrets.  I think walking past the ponds to see who’s visiting would be a great reason for an early morning walk.

I hope I’ll see the yellow-bellied sap sucker this year.