First Hummingbird of the Fall

This morning I looked out the window where I have my hummingbird feeder hanging and saw an adult male sitting on the fence about 15 ft. away from it. He came to the feeder and then took off. A few minutes later I looked out and saw what appeared to be a juvenile male sitting on the feeder. So, two individual hummers in a matter of minutes. Maybe it's getting time to set up my other feeders for all of the hummers I get in the fall.

Other interesting things going on around here include having up to twelve cardinals at my feeders at one time. There are several juveniles in that group. The males seem to have a bit of a testosterone surge still in them because any two adult males will have some kind of confrontation. The Eurasian Collared-doves seem to have had a successful breeding season. There are as many as eight of them around my feeders at a time. The bluebirds show up pretty regularly. I saw four of the juvenile bluebirds along with the male feeding from the fence in my yard yesterday. The swallows are migrating. I see them flying southwest most of the time. I've seen Barn, Tree and Cliff so far. Looks like I need to start getting out on Friday mornings for some birding since fall migration is up on us.

In case you're wondering how my Property Big Year is going, I'm at 126 for 2008. That's still 13 ahead of where I was this time in 2004, so I should have no trouble breaking that number. There are several birds that I missed in spring migration that I might get in the fall. I'll be posting my sightings from when I go out. I will probably have to wait until August 22 to start since I've got things going on today and next Friday.

I'm also going to expand the scope of what I write about on this blog. I'm going to include birds I see everywhere, not just on my property. I don't do a lot of birding in other places, but I get a fair amount in, even in the summer when I'm so busy. Hopefully with me blogging about all my bird sightings, I will update things a little more often.