We have many bird feeders around our house and usually the visitors are the same-old birds. We’ve been spending more time at home so we are noticing and responding quickly to new visitors.
Last Wednesday Rose-breasted grosbeaks arrived!! They over-winter in Central America and migrate north to breed. I just happened to see the first tired, hungry birds, so I filled all the feeders and they were happy. We have three pair. Most seasons we only have two.
A day later, I saw a Baltimore Oriole! Although they are supposed to be common, we rarely see them most years. They like fruit, and we happened to have some oranges. I halved an orange and used zip-ties to secure them to our tree. Perfect timing on my part. We now have all the local orioles hanging out at our place. I’m replacing the orange halves every day.
Around our barn, we have barn swallows. They produce a few clutches of chicks every year. I love watching them fly over our pond, catching insects. They’re used to us being in the barn and act almost tame at times. We put meal worms on a plate in the barn and when we leave they devour their treat.
This weekend our hummingbirds returned. We’ve had their feeders hanging the past week, so we were ready for them.
Of course we have all the usual birds, robins (American), red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, JAYS, wrens, sparrows, etc
I have a 6-position, 1-quart hummingbird feeder. It’s just past the end of peak feeding season, and the birds are taking 3 days or so to empty it.
A few weeks ago, I would have to fill it every day (!).
It’s hard to count them, but I think I’ve seen at least 8 feeding or waiting to feed at one time.
We get mostly Anna’s, but there are a few other species that visit.
Long story short, my wife inherited some money and we bought property in SW Michigan. I love watching the birds while there and I set up a birdfeeder in the backyard near the woods. The usual suspects at the feeder include chickadees, cardinals, titmice, nuthatches, and either downy woodpecker or hairy woodpecker - or both because I can’t tell one from the other. Additionally, in the area I’ve seen golden-fronted woodpeckers, pileated woodpeckers (I’ve got some decent photos of those), a hummingbird, and a wren.
At our home in Chicago, I don’t have a feeder set up. I’ve done it in the past but it gets overrun with pigeons and sparrows, so it’s not as fun to watch. There are house finches that live in the neighbor’s tree and we had goldfinches who loved our sunflowers one year. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a killdeer and we get falcons and hawks at times.
Since I’ve been working from home, my “home office”, also known as the dining room table table, faces the window overlooking the backyard feeder, so I get to observe the birds coming to the feeder while I’m working. House finches, white-crowned sparrows, and doves feeding on the ground are by far the most common visitors. Nuthatches show up fairly frequently, too. Occasionally a Nuttall’s woodpecker will come feed, although they seem more common in the winter and early spring. I’m guessing as the weather gets warmer there’s a more abundant supply of insects for them to feed on. Lately a pair of black-headed grosbeaks have been showing up to feed.
I really only get blue jays and cardinals at mine; I think the same cardinal family has been living in my tree for 15 years. For the first time ever (that I’ve seen), a woodpecker stopped by. The feeding hole was 4 inches away and he preferred to peck at the metal pole :smack:
We have a hummingbird feeder at our cabin. Starting around mid-April we get a bunch of different types of hummingbirds as they migrate and then a resident couple will settle in for the rest of the summer. In the fall we get the variety again as they go the other way. I don’t know the species, but they’re cool.
We also have mallards and wood ducks on our pond and a blue heron every once in a while. Here in DC, I’ve got pigeons, lots and lots of pigeons.
I have tree stump from a huge tree that lightning struck years ago. I have a tray feeder out there. I fill it with mixed birdseed.
I can sit in my window seat and watch. The usual birds: Cardinals, thrushes, barn swallows.
One weird thing is a big ol’Crow comes. It’s always the same one. He has a white feather on one of wings. He’s really too big for the feeder. He lands on it and scatters the feed and goes to the ground and eats.
In the stump is a hidey-hole that a squirrel couple is hiding acorns. They stop under the bird feeder and pick up sunflower seeds.
I guess Mr.Crow doesn’t like those.
My daughters gave me a bird feeder for Christmas this year – I’d never had one before. So far, seventeen species have showed up. Today I too saw my first rose-breasted grosbeak. Gorgeous birds. And a bluebird, although they are not usually feeder birds. We have barn swallows in the barn, and a pair of phoebes nesting under the eaves. Because I am a west coast native all the ‘ordinary’ birds are still very exciting. The cardinals, goldfinches, even the bluejays. California does not have anything like as colorful birds as New England.
I might have y’all beat for the most exciting birdfeeder sightings: neighborhood black bears tore ours down twice in a row before we gave up. Still, we have a pair of black-capped chickadees nesting in the birdhouse right outside our kitchen window (they drove away the bluebird pair, which I have mixed feelings about); and a robin pair is nesting near our driveway and screams at me whenever I get too close.
And yesterday I saw, hanging out in our yard, what I think was a yellow-throated warbler, and then saw what I think was a pine warbler when I was out on a hike. And a couple of weeks ago, I’m pretty sure I saw a migrating indigo bunting in our neighborhood. These are all new sightings for me, and I’m having a lot of fun watching more birds.
We have two feeders on the big pine in the back yard: one for conventional birdseed, and one full of peanuts; it’s a modified birdhouse I found at a yard sale. Birdseed for the finches, and peanuts for the blue jays; Mrs. Ka is partial to blue jays.
But the squirrels love the peanuts, too (and yes, they’re roasted but unsalted) and this has led to a number of midair mishaps, misunderstandings, and at least one hilarious interspecies tug of war we witnessed one Sunday over coffee on the back deck.
Still remember that one year we had a CREEP of a blue jay. He’d park on the side of the bird house, fish out a peanut, shake it, tap it on the wood, and then DISCARD it, fish out ANOTHER peanut, shake it, examine it, toss IT away, before settling on the PERFECT peanut, with which he would fly away. Meanwhile, Sunny the Dog, who was more observant than you’d think, would NOTICE this, and sneak off the deck to go eat the peanuts, shell and all, off the ground.
I just put up a seed bird feeder for the first time, I’ve had hummingbird feeders for years. It’s surprisingly busy.
Cards, Blue Jays, Goldfinches, Cowbirds, a red headed woodpecker of some sort, Chickadees, Chipping Sparrow. Red-wing blackbirds.
Now I need to figure out a better method to keep the squirrels out. The feeder is hanging from a horizontally run 1.5mm cable, and the damn tree rats will do a crawl hanging from the cable.
At my house, that’s part of the entertainment. We invariably have ONE old hand from last year who remembers how to brace himself from the tree and the feeder to avoid setting off the closing lever.
And then all the other squirrels KNOW they can eat out of the feeder, but about go nuts trying to figure out HOW. “Hey, that OTHER dude did it, so we KNOW it’s POSSIBLE… but…”
Also a ground squirrel and her adorable litter of five little baby squirrels.
One question, maybe for Colibri- the ravens are careful to look around. But our only local raptor I have seen is a Coopers Hawk, who is too small to take a raven. What are they looking out for?
so we are noticing and responding quickly to new visitors.