A goldfinch feeder filled with thistle seeds works wonders to attract goldfinches, though they might take a while to find it. Thistles also attract them, but most people don’t want those in their yards.
About an hour ago I saw a flock of about 30 Cedar Waxwings by the student union. Pretty cool!
I’m an avid birdwatcher, too! Here in Indiana, at my numerous feeders in the backyard, I’ve got Indigo Buntings, the usual Cardinals, Blue Jays, Black-Capped Chickadees, Hairy Woodpeckers, Downy Woodpeckers, Nuthatches, Titmice (Titmouse, only plural), etc. We’ve seen Yellow-Billed Cuckoos that are a rarity for us, some little yellow birds that I haven’t been able to identify quite yet, and some very pretty, little orange-breasted birds that I haven’t identified yet, either. There are several others that I can’t even think of right now, too. I’ve got several feeders and the birds are out there all the time during the daylight hours! It’s really relaxing and fun to watch. Plus, I actually learn about them, which makes it even better.
So, count me in!
Edited to add:
I forgot to mention the beautiful Hummingbirds! Gorgeous little things, they are!
I love bird watching, and am also a subscriber to Birds and Blooms, as well as being a member of the Audobon Society.
There’s a lot of webcams out there to watch live feeds of nesting birds. The two following links are to peregrine falcon nests.
The first one is a live video of a falcon nest on the Westar Energy building in Topeka, Kansas. Click on the link, and you will see another that takes you to the video. There’s only one eyas(young falcon) here, the male is agressive and destroyed the other eggs. But it’s live video.
The second link is to the falcon box atop the Kodak headquarter building in Rochester New York. It’s not video, but the nest can be viewed from several angles, and the picture refreshes about once a minute.
http://www.westarenergy.com/corp_com/contentmgt.nsf/publishedpages/news%20home#
I adore birds. Now, I don’t have much time or energy right now to be a full-fledged birdwatcher, but I would like to be. I am in the market for some good binoculars.
I do enjoy learning about bird identification, and have tons of bird books. I am also interested in learning to ID birds by their calls.
My favorite birds are raptors (especially owls) and I have a special place in my heart for crows. They are so intelligent and have such interesting personalities and habits. But in general, I love birds because they are just so incredibly beautiful. And I am also very interested in how many of them raise their young through teamwork as a couple, and many mate for life. I watched an eaglecam last spring and was amazed at the teamwork, and how the male would sit on the eggs, then trade with the female and go off and bring back food, and how they both work so hard to bring food back for the young. If only humans could follow their example! And if you have seen that penguin movie (I forget what it’s called at the moment) you are just amazed at the dedication of both parents. I am also constantly amazed at their social skills, their flight skills and their hunting skills.
By the way, there are some great birdcams here, which include herons and eagles.
I love watching birds too, and my Dad is an avid birder, he has bought me a continuing subscription to Birds and Blossoms and I also love it. What can I say about the birds here? In the winter I feed, and I have all sorts of LBB’s*. We also have crows and ravens, hawks and eagles, plus all the shore and water birds, too many sea ducks for me to keep track of. I love the terns, and what the Natives call a whalebird. I have a nesting pair of eagles I can see from my yard, and another across the road. Eagles are all that and a bag of chips, but they are so large and accustomed to humans here that they can be a bit intimidating. Most of all I think I love to hear the ravens call, and watch them dancing on the winds. They tumble and free fall and catch themselves and soar upward just to tumble back down through the air…very awesome. We do have one hummingbird which makes it to Kodiak, the rufous hummingbird, and while I haven’t seen one, my husband relates a story about being out on the boat and watching the skipper being buzzed by one. The skipper thought it was just one of the big bumblebees and kept swatting at it until my husband finally told him what it was! Oh, and the puffins! They are such cool looking birds, known as sea parrots. There really are too many for me to list, but it’s sure a lot of fun looking for them, and I suppose I ought to start a list of what I see.
Nice topic, Ellen!
*LBB: Little Brown Birds
I saw a couple of my favorites last weekend–a water ouzel, and a white-headed woodpecker.
Can someone explain why the dawn chorus is so delightful when you’re camping, but a single robin singing outside your bedroom window at 4:30AM is such a royal pain in the ass?
Is there anyplace in the world NOT infested with English sparrows? (I do not recall seeing them in Panama, but who notices?)
There ought to be a guide for the common urban birds. Crow, raven, doves (all types) sparrows, swifts. For most of us, that is what we see.
I do. 
They’re here, but not as numerous as they are in a lot of cites.
If you ever come back here, you can pick up a copy of A Guide to the Common Birds of Panama City by Jorge Ventocilla, published by the Panama Audubon Society and the Smithsonian, which includes 50 common species.
I don’t see many interesting birds in my yard, too urban, but I did see a cardinal the other day and I was pretty excited about that. They just don’t seem to be as common around here as they used to be, I think the non-native wild parrots are invading their niche. So when I heard that familiar cheep-cheep I ran to the kitchen window and there she was on the fence, hopefully there was a male around for her.
When I was about 18 I volunteered at a bird rehab place which lasted for over a year, sometimes working full-time hours (for free). I saw and handled a lot of neat birds there. I’ve handled four different Bald Eagles, seen a Mexican Black Hawk (not native, was confiscated from someone by fish and game), and been chased around a room by a booby (he was way off course, we had to ship him off somewhere to be released). I’ve hand-raised numerous baby birds, including a sandhill crane.
I adore falcons but love most raptors. I was one of the rare volunteers that was allowed to handle raptors so that was pretty cool. By the way, vultures like to regurgitate when handled … I don’t recommend handling vultures.
I think shrikes are cool, creepy little birds.
Crows are indeed pretty smart. We had a few crippled ones that lived there many of them learned to talk or do tricks and they all had individual personalities.
I have a special fondness for brown pelicans because we had so many of them. When I started volunteering there I didn’t understand how the workers could tell the pelicans apart but after a while you can, they start to look different and they all had different personalities.
Now I only get to see the occasional wild bird that people bring to the clinic. My co-workers get freaked out when they see me reach in a cage and grab a hawk, heron or even a duck. You just need to know what to reach for first. I once spent about an hour of my time off the clock working on an immature heron that had fallen out of a nest and injured it’s wings which were covered in maggots. I picked out every single maggot, that’s how much I love birds.
Unfortunately, I have never actually seen a wild roadrunner.
This is my cool bird story. My old boyfriend was a biologist at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center where they raised whooping cranes. They had a bunch of breeding pairs and would collect the eggs every year and hatch them, and raise some without any contact with humans so they could be released in the wild (the caretakers would always be in a crane costume, basically covered in a big white sheet, and feed them with a crane hand puppet).
Anyway my boyfriend would take me there (it wasn’t open to the public) and we would visit with the whoopers. They were very cool birds with lots of personality! They were very interested in humans and were excited to get visitors. They would follow you around and act really curious. A few of them took a lot of interest in my shiny buttons and kept pecking and biting at them. The females had a huge crush on my boyfriend and you could tell they were smitten with him. They would do mating calls to him whenever he was around.
The fun part was playing with the babies! In this case, I got to play with some sandhill crane babies. They were the cutest! Here’s a photo of one of the babies, 8 days old. And here is one about 25 days old.
I heard lots of stories over the couple of years he worked there about the individual birds. They all had very distinct personalities. It was really sad when one very old male died, and his mate was very sad and acted depressed for a while. I think eventually they hooked her up with another mate. But my boyfriend said it was really sad to see the way she acted after her husband died.
We would also take them out on field trips to a nearby pond. We would drive in a truck and they would fly behind us! Then they would play around in the pond for a while then we’d drive back and they’d follow us again. It was amazing!
I used to be Circulation and Marketing Director for a bird watching magazine so I heartily recommend Bird Watcher’s Digest for more birding info.
A little more geeky but loads more information. The Thompson brothers live for bird watchers at pretty much all points of their lives. Bill, the editor, built a 50 foot bird watching tower in his place in the SE Ohio woods. Andy’s famous for stopping work because he saw something out the window and heading out to see what it was.
Bill is also the one who wrote ‘Birdwatching for Dummies’ several years ago.
Go birding as often as possible, read your field guides, check your area for birding clubs…
I have been a birder for over 20 years, it is relaxing, educational, fun…
If you want to learn some bird songs try the “Bird Guide” link on this page. The Bird Guide has photos, songs, and a few “cool facts” about many North American birds.
Learning the songs is useful because a lot of birds are difficult to see or tell apart from one another even when you can see them.
I do regular neighborhood bird counts (3-4 a week) and send the data to the Cornell Ornithology lab. It’s interesting to see how weather conditions and changes in food supply affect bird populations.
** nyctea**, I love your crane stories and am so envious of your close contact! I’m also thrilled by the stories of crows and ravens. Birds & Blooms always seems to have a story or two about how people have tamed birds and I’d love to be able to do it!
kai I remain in a permanent state of awe regarding all the species you see, living near the ocean plus of course fabulous Alaska. I should also keep a list, though it’ll never be as exotic as yours! I’ve seen bald eagles one time; we get them in Western Kentucky in an area called the Ballard Wildlife Management Area. It’s restricted to the public in the wintertime and a stop-over place for many migrating birds along the “Mississippi Flyway.”
It’s neat you mention The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Wile E. PBS has it on the schedule next week, and I was just writing a story about it yesterday for my email newsletter! (I’m in marketing for a PBS station)
::raises hand:: I’m a bird lover! I have a big-ass feeder in my back yard and regularly get cardinals, bluejays, 3 kinds of doves, 2 kinds of blackbirds, and crows. The mockingbirds feed on the lantana berries that grow behind my yard. And the osprey, hawks, owls, whippoorwills, quail and others live in the woods further back.
I believe the absolutely official, birding-sanctioned term for those are “little brown jobbies”. I just love that.
We get Stellar’s jays in the back yard, and hummingbirds. The jays shriek! Not a melodic call. I’ve heard an owl (hoo-hoo-hoo-HOO-hoo-hoo) and there are plump red robin-types and lots of little brown jobbies.
The weirdest bird I’ve had in the back yard is, I swear to god, a white peahen.
Oh, I forgot to mention that during migration season, we get goldfinches and robins. I’ve had my thithle-theed* feeder mobbed by finches before. But they’re not bright gold during migration, I guess. More yellowish.
*yeah, I have trouble with that phrase. 
Count me in, too.
I have, lessee :::counts::: four birdfeeders that get attention; the hummingbirds haven’t shown up for the nectar feeders yet. One that serves generic seed / dried fruit mixture. One tube feeder with teeny holes, for a combined niger seed / cracked sunflower mix. A pair of suet feeders (one cheap cage, one double “woodpecker” with tail prop).
Had a lot of trouble with bushy-tailed squirrelbirds 
and the suet feeder until I discovered hot-pepper suet. That scared 'em away and I got to see downy woodpeckers, gray catbirds, and even one mockingbird (that someone here at the Dope identified for me). Unfortunately the starlings have found my suet feeders, and spread the word to all their friends (sort of like a low-key high school “parents out of town” party that gets out of hand) and now they’ve proven they can devour three cakes of suet in 36 hours. The robin helps with the cleanup of the crumbs that spill below that.
I get downy woodpeckers visiting the thistle (niger) feeder also - fortunately the starlings can’t or don’t eat that stuff so there’s always something for the downies. Goldfinches also like that one, and occasionally the sparrows check it out also.
The coolest bird I see in my backyard is a bit less common: the red-bellied woodpecker (also IDed by someone here). He likes the standard seed feeder. We also get cardinals, sparrows, and blue jays there, along with grackles (who seem to like to party there as much as the starlings at the suet feeder). And of course house finches, chickadees, tufted titmice, and juncoes.
The mourning doves like to visit also, though they either hang out on top of the pole for the seed feeder, or peck around on the ground - they’re too heavy for the squirrel-resistant feature so they just get the spillage.
We haven’t seen any hawks visiting the yard, which is a surprise as there are obviously lots of little winged appetizers for them. I guess the trees that shade the yard are enough to either block their view of the buffet, or make it tricky to swoop down there.
I had a pleasant surprise a week or so back - I’m used to bluejays and their raucous “JAY!” sound. But while I was working in another part of the yard I heard a very melodious 4-tone song. I walked carefully around a tree and the singer was a bluejay, perched on top of the feeder pole, singing.
I hate starlings. They’re so ugly, the run in mobs, they don’t have a pretty call and they’re ALWAYS AROUND. Then I feel bad for hating any bird … if I had the choice of observings starlings or nothing at all, I guess I’d pick the starlings.
But when I was growing up they’d gather in the trees and poop in great drecky droves on our sidewalks. They’d drop dead, too, and get all maggoty before we got out there to scoop 'em up and bury 'em. Ugh. That put me off starlings for life.