Got a few more pics of some of the birds and animals in the garden. It is like Heathrow Airport with all the birds coming and going and at the moment the garden resembles a zoo. As I type we have three rabbits, about six chipmunks, three squirrels and lots of birds running around.

This is the chipmunk getting onto the bird feeder, then struggling to get to one of the higher openings.

This is the female Towhee who is brown whereas the male (previous post) is black.

And a grackle

Female grosbeak

As today was a holiday in Canada we decided to take a walk along the waterfront in Belleville. Although it was bright and sunny it was on the cool side with the temps only reaching 12C, but it was still lovely.

Here is a pic of the bridge which goes from Belleville to Prince Edward County.

And some more of the waterfront area.

Last night I happened to be looking out of the window into the garden when I spotted the male grosbeak and his wife. Then I noticed another male and then another on the feeder. This is the first time we have spotted more than one male at the same time. So now we know we have at least three males and two females although I suspect we have three pairs. They all seemed to get on okay with each other, no bickering etc.

In this pic you will see two males in the tree and one on the feeder with one female also in the tree.

Here are the two males and one female.

And the third male on the feeder.

They all have slightly different red chest markings.

And that is all in our garden. The other day there was an amazing flight between two male brown-headed cowbirds. They were rolling and tumbling across the garden basically trying to kill each other. Here are a couple of pics of the fight in action.

It was vicious. When hubby went out to break them up they flew off but you could still hear them flighting in the trees – no idea how it all ended up.

As I mentioned in a previous post the flickers are blatantly having sex in our garden- they have no shame. Also the grosbeaks are back and here is the male in the garden this morning.

On the chillin’ side of things – yes you guessed it – the squirrels. These snaps were taken whilst the cowbirds were fighting just a couple of feet away. Obviously he takes bird fights in his stride!

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We are getting lots of birds returning to our garden that we haven’t seen since last year. We saw the grosbeak this morning for the first time and the towhee is about but we have only seen him once. The flicker pair are in the garden every day and I must add, carrying out rather indecent sexual acts on the lawn!

This is the female – she is here most often and can be seen hammering her head into the ground looking for insects.

This is the male – he has the eighties mustache!

The gold finches are now in full summer plumage of bright yellow and look beautiful when they flit across the garden from feeder to feeder. We seem to have many more of them than last year although we have changed the seed we put in the feeders which they seem to really enjoy.

We also have the killdeer running around the front garden and lots of robins. Sadly one robin was blown into our living room window the other day by strong winds and she died, so there is one lonely male around somewhere. Other birds of note are the siskins, blackbirds, grackles and the lovely little chickadees.

And of course we have the squirrels who keep everything in order. This is Boris surveying his kingdom.

As you can see their coats are looking tatty as they loose their thick winter coat for a more sleek and shiny summer one. We have also noticed activity in the nest box in which the squirrel nested and raised four young last year – so fingers crossed that will happen again.

The weather is all over the place at the moment. The other day we got to 27C but have been sitting at the mid teens this week with lots of rain.

I cannot believe how many new birds we still keep seeing in the garden. We have just spotted a bird we had not seen before and had to look him up in the book for find what it was. It is apparently a Pine Grosbeak – this is our third species of grosbeak as we have the evening and rose-breasted as well.