Sunday Wild Bird Garden Blogging

A bunch of dianthus and our resident fake flamingo
surrounded by pecan shell mulch.

We've been out back working on our garden for several weekends now. We're not completely finished, but it's nice enough already to be a place of respite, relaxation and natural pleasures. It's the perfect place to savor something cool to drink and take in the antics of the wild birds that hang out in or pass through the neighborhood, many of which visit our feeders. It's true: we have both inside and outside birds to feed! The seed sellers love us.

House finches at one of our backyard feeding stations.

You've seen many photos of our seven parakeets, our peach-faced lovebird and our sun conure parrot. We haven't managed to catch many wild birds with our camera out back, except for house sparrows, finches and white-winged doves. But here are a couple of generic photos that show two of the more dramatic avians we've seen over the past week or so in our garden.

We have a black-chinned hummingbird couple that visits our hummer feeder all day long. The female is a rather drab tan. The showy male looks like this:

As it gets closer to summer, we'll have a couple more varieties of hummers sipping. For about a week, we had a red-headed acorn woodpecker feasting on our suet and making insect runs in the trees around us before it continued on its migration to somewhere:

Snazzy, isn't he? That stand-up cap of red makes all the difference.