Now, we have May, the month of great natural fecundity.

The late nature writer Hal Borland had an apt description of May: "Here is abundance, and growth and beneficence, so much of it that the world seems hard put to contain it all. It constantly spills over, outreaching itself in abundance."

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (ENLARGE)

Sightings of rose-breasted grosbeaks are beginning to pour in. The birds are migrating through Georgia now.

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With May's munificence upon us, here's a sample of what's happening in Georgia:

• The neotropical songbird migration is peaking and starts winding down in another week or so. Most songbirds, including migrants and year-round residents, have started nesting. One exception is the American goldfinch, which won't start nesting until July.

• As is the case every spring, many Georgia homeowners are reporting seeing a male rose-breasted grosbeak for the first time at their feeders. "Finally, we have ... a rose-breasted grosbeak, the first time I've ever seen this bird," writes Kim House of Canton. It is indeed a stunning bird — a large, triangular, rose-colored spot on a white breast and a solid black "hood" and back. Rose-breasted grosbeaks are migrating through Georgia now. A few will nest in the higher elevations of our mountains, but most will continue flying to summer nesting grounds up north.

• The last of the cedar waxwings, yellow-rumped warblers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers and other birds that spent the winter in Georgia are departing for their northern breeding grounds.

• White-tailed does are giving birth to fawns. Lots of other animal babies also are out and about. This is the peak of the coyote denning season.

• On Georgia's coast, loggerhead sea turtles are crawling up on barrier island beaches to lay their eggs. Brown pelican young are visible in nests. The painted bunting, Georgia's most colorful songbird, is nesting. Endangered least terns have begun nesting on beaches, sandy flats — and on flat gravel rooftops that look like beaches.

• In Georgia's rivers, red breasted sunfish and spotted sunfish are spawning. Bluegill will be bedding at the full moon.

• In the Okefenokee Swamp and other South Georgia wetlands, male alligators have started their courtships, marked by loud hissing, resounding bellows and water slapping. Many aquatic turtles are laying eggs; raccoons are just as rapidly digging up and eating the eggs.

• Most of Georgia's common bat species are giving birth through mid-June.

• Drive carefully. More than 10 turtle species are crossing roads and highways to deposit their eggs on land. They include painted turtles, box turtles, stinkpots or musk turtles, map turtles, yellow-bellied sliders, softshell turtles, and common snapping turtles. Alligator snapping turtles, Eastern mud turtles and river cooters (which can be seen by the dozens sunning on snags and rocks in ponds and rivers) are egg-laying. Gopher tortoises in the sandhills and pine-scrub oak habitats of South Georgia also are egg-laying. Baby green anole lizards are hatching from eggs that adult females laid one at a time in moist soils, rotting logs or in the leaf litter of the forest floor.

• Green tree frogs (they make a quank, quank sound), barking tree frogs (a single bell-like note), common gray tree frogs, squirrel tree frogs (a nasal trill), pine wood tree frogs, bird-voiced tree frogs, cricket frogs, bullfrogs and Eastern narrow-mouthed frogs are some of the state's spring and summer breeders now breeding or gearing up for mating. The tadpoles of several fall-and-winter breeding frogs — including spring peepers, chorus frogs and leopard frogs — are swimming about.

• Lots of snakes are out. The Eastern racer, one of Georgia's most common snakes, is laying eggs. Rat snakes, also common, are breeding.

Bluebirds

One of Georgia's most favorite songbirds is the Eastern bluebird. Numerous folks — including myself — put up bluebird boxes in hopes of enticing the beautiful birds to nest in our yards. So it's not surprising that we get lots of questions about bluebirds, particularly about destruction of nests and deaths of nestlings.

Unfortunately, bluebirds don't have an easy life. House sparrows, house wrens, European starlings, hawks, snakes, cats, raccoons and others prey on bluebirds and their young. As if that weren't enough, many other birds — titmice, chickadees, swallows, nuthatches, woodpeckers, wrens, flycatchers — want to kick out the bluebirds and take over their boxes.

For a chart useful in helping determine what might be causing problems for bluebirds in your yard — and a list of possible solutions — visit audubon-omaha.org/bbbox/bbtabl2.htm .

In the sky

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower reaches a peak of about 20 meteors per hour on Monday morning. Look to the southeast from about midnight until dawn, Fernbank Science Center astronomer David Dundee says. The shower will continue through Wednesday night.

The moon is new tonight, and thus absent from the sky for a couple of nights — good for viewing the meteor shower. On Wednesday night, look for the thin crescent moon just after sunset.

Mercury is low in the west just after dark. Mars is in the west just after dark and will appear near the moon on Saturday night. Jupiter rises out of the east around midnight. Saturn is high in the southwest at dusk. Venus is not visible this month.