Several visitors to the feeder today! Mostly house sparrows, plus maybe a pair of cardinals (I didn’t know the female cardinal looked so different!). And a chipmunk came to clean up whatever the birds spilled!
And it was probably unrelated to the feeder, but a confused deer dropped by, looking around our street. Seemed to be lost – would go one way for a few seconds, then turn around and go the other way. Big surprise, as we’re not really close to any significant forested area, just lots of tiny intermittent green spaces and a few small parks.
I’m trying to identify a bird who sings the “O Fortuna” chorus. High high low low, the “sors salutis, et virtutis” part starting about here. BirdID suggests Mountain Chickadee, which is the right area (not sure if they use that data) but none of the songs online match.
Once they put the word out…:eek: it seems there is some secret message board for birds, they know when its empty, as soon as its filled, everyone shows up. I have a feeder right outside my bedroom window, at the foot of the bed. Lazy bird watching!
Lots of house finches here, I’ve been putting up shade screens over nesting areas, as they nest in a safe place but its too close to the greenhouse roofs, they sit up there panting.
I love spotting raptors, and we had a small merlin show up and an american kestral. Lots of the other raptors common to Santa Barbara as well.
I care for indoor/outdoor parrot aviaries, so the racket always seems to attract some interesting birds.
We were doing yard work Sunday and my gf pointed out a bird flying toward us that looked huge. Initially it was too far away to see details, but it was obviously a very large bird. As it got closer, we both realized at the exact same moment that the bird was a bald eagle. Flew right over us and continued on its way.
We saw a bald eagle last year while pontooning on the Allegheny river, and saw one a few years before that while kayaking the upper Allegheny near Foxburg.
You aren’t kidding! I’ve already had to refill it twice. Some of that seems to be messiness – it appears that some birds kick up what they don’t want in their search for what they do want.
I got the BirdNET app for identifying bird calls and songs. It’s identified about 20 species in my immediate area, some of which I have conformed visually.
Since March 1, 2020 I have seen the following birds:
Dark-eyed Junco
Brown-headed Cowbird
Black-billed Magpie
Spotted Towhee
Mountain Chickadee
House Finch
Song Sparrow
Pine Sisken
White-breasted Nuthatch
American Robin
Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay
Common Raven
Red-winged Blackbird
Mallard
Canyon Towhee
American Crow
Northern Flicker
European Starling
American Kestrel
House Sparrow
Western Bluebird
Rough-legged Hawk
Turkey
White-winged Dove
Steller’s Jay
Cassin’s Finch
Turkey Vulture
Hairy Woodpecker
Rock Dove (pigeon)
Downy Woodpecker
Lesser Goldfinch
Brewer’s Blackbird
Black-chinned Hummingbird
Western Kingbird
Black-headed Grosbeak
Broad-tailed Hummingbird
Chipping Sparrow
Western Tanager
Ash-throated Flycatcher
Black-capped Chickadee
American Goldfinch
Black-capped Chickadee
Violet-Green Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Northern Mockingbird
Cooper’s Hawk
Killdeer
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
In the same period I also saw the following non-birds:
Colorado Chipmunk
Striped Skunk
Rock Squirrel
Mule Deer
Bordered Plant Bug
West Coast Lady (butterfly)
White Cabbage (butterfly)
Prairie Lizard
Hunt’s Bumblebee
White-lined Sphinx Moth
Variable Skink
Western Tiger Swallowtail (butterfly)
Southwestern Tent Caterpillar
Red Admiral (butterfly)
Common Buckeye (butterfly)
Painted Lady (butterfly)
Orange Sulphur (butterfly)
Yellow Bumblebee
Garden Snail
The chipmunks are bold – they climb up into the dish and fill their cheeks, then presumably go save them in a whole somewhere, and come back and do it again!
Getting a squirrel baffle – we’ll see if it works. I like that the chipmunks and squirrels clean up the mess that falls to the ground, but I don’t want them climbing up onto the feeders themselves.