Yesterday evening we were pleased to welcome a family of Eastern Bluebirds into the backyard. These birds love our birdbath with its water dripper. They were regular visitors in the early spring, and haven’t been around as much through the summer. So it was much to our delight that we saw them again. I’ll recap the conversation to give you a sense of our excitement:

It’s a bluebird!

No, three!

Wait, there are four! Three in the birdbath and one on the birdcam!

There’s one on the back feeder too!

<squeals, squeals, happy dance>

SIX! There are six of them!!

It was fortuitous that I had cleaned the windows in the morning. I dashed to grab my camera, then focused through the glass as the birds flew around in the backyard.

There was just one problem. A Northern Mockingbird has decided that the nearby American Beautyberry bush belongs exclusively to him. Having these six outsiders so close to his territory annoyed him. So he dove into the middle of the bath party and tried to scare them away.

Lucky for me, they didn’t go far.

I alternated between squealing and pressing the shutter button as the bluebirds flew back and forth between trees, shrub tops, and my bird feeders. The sun had already set and the light was fading quickly, but I got a few shots of individual birds:

The mockingbird thought he won the battle when the birds left, but I think they’ll be back. I hope I can sneak outside and catch them with the Beast in some better light!