I have seen one other eastern kingbird. But it was from far away while I was kayaking.

My first orchard oriole. This one was female. I have to laugh though. I was getting confused because there were so many birders out this morning and then the above would fly by and they would say “There’s an oriole.”. Then the one below would fly by and someone else would say the same thing. I kept thinking “someone doesn’t know their birds very well.” People keep calling two different birds the same thing. Well, I was the one who didn’t know. The below is the male version. They look so different.

My first male orchard oriole sighting.

My first northern parula.

Not a first bird, night herons are everywhere here. We were quietly sitting in front of Larry’s fountain hoping something tiny and cute would fly up and all we got was this big thing. He looked around like “Why are all these people sitting around in the woods?” He took a couple of drinks and left.

The woods were full of butterflies.

A couple of weekends ago I headed down to Fort Desoto. This was before the big “fall out” weekend but I had heard there were a few migratory birds already there. I headed to the mulberry bush woods and there was already a traffic jam through the trails. Rush hour traffic looking for birds. (And my hubby thinks I’m the only one.) The best part was having a lot of experts around to help with IDs (unless they got any of the above wrong). It saved me some time looking randomly for tiny birds in my Stokes 800 page guide. It was a beautiful morning to be at the park. I spent most of the day there before getting a flat tire on the Howard Franklin bridge on the way home. Triple A came to my rescue.