Yeah, I don’t mind if the squirrels and rats eat too. But no, I haven’t seen squirrels up on the suet. The feeder is on a pole near a bare bush, but not near trees for them to jump from.
You’re right that Robert is pretty unflappable (heh). He continues to eat even when I am moving around, unlike some of the other skittish birds.
I feel bad for the ground feeders, since all the feed I scattered is now covered up by 18" of snow. But I guess if they get desperate enough they’ll go for the up-high feeders. There were three small brown birds (probably the finch-type) on the mesh bag at once this morning.
I have a new bird since last year. A pair of them showed up, obviously doves but the mourning doves we usually have, larger than those. And not pigeons, smaller than those. Almost uniformly gray with a dark band around their neck. They stayed through the winter and this winter so far, paired up. Within the last few weeks I have 6 or 8 more pairs, so I looked them up.
Pretty sure they are the eurasian collared dove. The ringed turtle dove looks similar. The collared dove has a 3 note call while the turtle dove has 2. These guys have 3 notes.
I’m impressed with how quickly I went from a single pair to many pairs, and they are pretty tame around people. Especially people with food and water
My father told me about the Xcel Energy Bird Cams which currently feature a bald eagle and a great horned owl, and falcons. If you look at the Eagle daily pix at 5 PM you can see him; the Owl doesn’t appear in the last 24 hours. d’oh I hope there will be eagle eggs soon! Apparently the owl left a vole out at some point trying in vain to attract a sweetie.
I have a copper dish style feeder I received as a gift. It goes 100% ignored by the birds. One time, I got a small horde of starlings around it but that’s it. I’m in an older established suburban area with lots of trees but I guess the birds have found someplace better to hang out.
Oh, and it’s filled with a standard grocery store “Wild bird seed” mix.
Same ones as last winter. Chickadees. Tufted titmouse. Junkets. Four (count 'um four!) Bluejays ( they alway show up together, I think they’re in some sort of polygomous realtionship). A cardinal couple (I think the female is more elegent if less flashy.) We had plenty of purple finches and moruning dove but that was this summer.
I wish I had a woodpecker. I heard one came by when I wasn’t there. Maybe if I put up a new suet feeder…the one we have now, no one seems to be eating from. But I like the ones we had before, basically a metal cage to put a square of suet in. Easy acess.
And squirrels. Well squirrels have to eat too! And I like to watch them hanging from the feeder by two toes. They do chase off the bird, all excecpt the bluejay mafia. You don’t mess with bluejays.
I haven’t seen the blue jays and cardinals around in a few weeks–I guess they’ve moved farther south. We do still get regular visits from finches, who knock down enough stuff to feed maybe 20 (!) mourning doves. I’ve totally supported like three generations of the stupid things and they still panic when they see me coming. Ungrateful bastards.
Everybody’s getting hungry. I have to refill the feeder (about a liter) every other day now.
I used to have the Eurasian doves at the feeder but then I didn’t see any for a while and I thought the hawk had gotten them. Now, however, it’s the breeding season and they are loudly courting all over the neighborhood.
My feeder has been Bird Central the last few days - a wider variety than I see most of the time during the summers. I think it’s because so much of the ground is covered by a thick layer of hard-frozen ice/snow, that the birds simply can’t get to their usual sources of food. I guess even the ground feeders are having better luck here, with the spillage from the others landing on top of the hard snow. I’ve had times where there have been 3-4 bluejays at the same time, squabbling over the food - I’d never seen more than one at a time before.
I’ve now successfully identified dark-eyed juncos and tufted titmice - which I’d seen before but not quite figured out.
The totally new one I saw this morning was about the size of a cardinal, maybe a tad larger (but nowhere near as large as a mourning dove). Gray back. Cream front, and front/sides of head. Wide red top/back of head - sort of like a wide mohawk. Longish thin beak I think though I only got a quick glimpse of it. It was shy - wasn’t at the feeder for more than a few seconds, I’m not sure whether it even perched, and then dashed off to the pine tree and disappeared. Any ideas what that one was? Maybe some odd woodpecker?
long beak and red head? i’m betting woodpecker myself. i can’t keep them straight without my guidebook, but i get the roufus (sp?) and red-head woodpeckers in our area. the bigger one sounds like what you describe, but i can’t remember which is which.
Definitely not the red-headed woodpecker - that (per this page) one’s head is entirely read (the one I saw had white throat/cheeks). Also the one I saw didn’t have the white on its back. A rufous woodpecker doesn’t seem to be native to Virginia (it’s Asian) and looks quite different from the one I saw - could you be thinking of a different species? If you think of any other varieties you’ve seen, it’s quite possible it’s the same as something you’ve seen - I’m just up the road from you
I admit, when I saw it out of the corner of my eye I first thought “house finch” when I saw “red head” + “not red body” but this thing was larger and the body looked quite different from the house finches I’ve identified.
Wait - I know what it was! It was the bastard child of an unholy three-way alliance between a cardinal, a junco and a dove! Or a Frankenstein’s Monster-like assemby of those three components! ZOMBIE BIRDS FROM THE SUBURBS! AIIIEEEEE!!!
Mama Zappa: That’s a bit of a poser. Red on the head usually means woodpecker, but they are mostly black and white, otherwise. You might consider a “Red-bellied Woodpecker,” which are native to Virginia (where you are, if I read correctly).
They are about 10" long (about Cardinal size, if a bit bigger), red stripe from forehead down to nape of neck (the “mohawk”), but greyish on belly and face, while black and white speckles on back…perhaps the contrast made it look cream/gray.
The “Ladder-backed Woodpecker” has a red mohawk, but is a bit smaller, and has black stripes on its cheeks, not to mention a speckled belly.
It could also be a “Flicker,” possibly, but the males have very prominent black “mustache.” The females evidently do not. The size is right, though, and the color is more gray belly and black-&-tan speckled back (as opposed to most woodpeckers who are very much “salt-&-pepper”/black-&-white speckled backs).
gigi’s link to birdcams reminded me of one of my favorite spring websites:
The Kodak company has been running a peregrine falcon reintroduction program from the roof of their headquarters in Rochester, NY for several years. Being Kodak, they have installed several cameras within the nesting box that update every few minutes during the entire run from the first appearance of the parents to the last exit of the chicks (or eyases, as they call them).
Here is the link, which is currently down for the winter. When the parents return (Mariah and Kaver), the cameras will start up, and the discussions will begin. There is a message board, you can grab really closeup still shots…it’s cool as beans. Bookmark it, check it around Aprilish, once things warm up.
I was thinking my female cardinal. By the colors. They have a a red mohawk. But they don’t have a pointy bills. Post a picture. If anyone will know it’s my mom, she’s the identifreak. Did rocks. Did plants. Did birds. Did mold. Currently doing bugs. If she doesn’t know she’ll die trying.
I’ll have to try to get a photo if Woody comes by for another visit, he was purty!
Definitely not a female cardinal, we get loads of those and they’re quite different looking. The “mohawk” today was not a crest as with, say, a pileated woodpecker, it was just “head-shaped”
Female cardinals pretty much look like male cardinals, but they are mostly gray. They DO have a “red mohawk,” but they also have a “pointy bill.”
In fact, the closest bird to a female cardinal is something called the “Pyrrhuloxia,” or “Gray Cardinal,” which is similar to a female Cardinal, only its beak is rather yellow/gray/greenish, as opposed to bright orange. Plus, its range is mostly SW Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico…whereas the Cardinal is pretty much east of everything from the midwest prairies to the east coast…so they don’t mix a lot.
But I agree with betenoir: a picture would be nice, if you can get one.
Mom says “red breasted woodpecker”. Which may be the same as the latterbacked woodpecker Dijon mentioned. They are in fact latterbacked. And barely red breasted. But they have a red head. That’s what happens when you leave names up to biologists.
Thanks - I googled “red breasted woodpecker” and from the photos, it looks to be the same bird as the “red bellied woodpecker”. Haven’t yet found a site that claims the two to be identical though but I imagine it’s just a difference in terminology. Good to have independent confirmation of what I saw - tell your mom I said “thanks!”. Both sets of photos show more visible laddering than I recall, but that may be a combination of aging eyes and winter feathering.
Got a general question re suet feeders: I’ve seen webpages advertising suet feeders that are targeted specifically at woodpeckers - such as the “tail prop” ones on this site. Anyone know if these really encourage woodpecker visitation? The downies I’ve seen at the suet feeder so far haven’t complained but I think it’d be totally cool to get the pileated woodpeckers to come visit
Where are you? My friend tells me the pileated guys don’t stick around here in the winter, so she didn’t have advice about those feeders. She has seen them at other times of the year and doesn’t have a special feeder for them.
Too lazy right now to run a proper feeder, but I’ve been throwing the parrot’s extra kibble out onto the deck-- the juncos and thrushes and sparrows come early for the bready stuff, then later a couple of ravens and flickers come for the beans and wheat berries and such.
Got another one for you guys: This one just returned today (hadn’t seen it before this year) so perhaps it’s a migratory bird that just returned to Virginia.
it’s about the size of a cardinal. Beak looks to be visibly orange as opposed to some nondescript color. Also the beak is not a long-slender sort nor the fat “cardinal” beak, sort of a “generic” shape. The bird looks “black” at first glance but when you look more carefully its back, at least, has dark brown mixed in with the black. There were a number of these at once, all visiting the suet feeder. No photos yet - the 2 times I grabbed the camera they disappeared.
Oh - gigi - we’re in northern Virginia. Didn’t realize the pileated woodpeckers were migratory. I never even saw downy woodpeckers until last autumn so perhaps woodpeckers are just settling into / returning to our suburban area in the last year or so. Maybe they’ll check out our yard once they return. Crossing my fingers - they’re cool-looking birds!
JuncOs!
Obviously I’ve spent too much time as a senator.