Starting back in the winter (no, we don't have snow here...at the moment), I noticed the birds (and this ugly thing in particular) really going for the mountain ash berries. I knew they ate the berries, but this must have been a hard winter because it's the first year they stripped the tree clean.
The robins also went after the mountian ash:
Thankfully we have no shortage of cardinals all winter. It's nice to see that bit of bright color in all the whiteness.
Towards the end of January I started noticing this guy. It was very hard to get a good shot of him because he was always flitting about and energetic.
Mind you, all of these shots are through a layer of plastic on the back door, which isn't all the clean - so I'm amazed the pictures came out at all!
After pinning him down in a few photos, I am pretty sure this is a white-breasted nuthatch.
A few weeks ago while working on a project I kept noticing a bright something out of the corner of my eye. This guy (a pair of them actually) was just as flighty as the other and quite hard to pin down.
I'm almost certain this is a golden-winged warbler.
Last week we discovered we had a Veery on the premises - but only because it flew into our window so hard it killed itself. I assume that's what happened - we just found its body on the front porch.
There are apparently white-throated sparrows around too. At least that's what I think I've been hearing - I haven't actually seen them.
It's another sure sign of spring when there are so many glorious birds around and they're all chirping so happily. Which reminds me - each year a pair of sparrows of some sort build a nest on top of our power line at the back of the house. It never seems to last. According to our neighbor a crow attacks it each time to eat the eggs/babies. I'm not sure if that's typical crow behavior. I just know I've never seen it happend, but invariably I discover the happy couple dispersed and the nest in pieces on the ground. I just found the nest last week and looked through it to see if there were any signs of foul play. No eggs or shells or babies, so who knows what happened. But it was fascinating to see the make-up of this nest: grass, straw, gum wrappers, plastic, bits of cloth, and tons of chicken feathers! I'm not sure if they were from our girls or other chickens in the neighborhood.
It's so wonderful to have birds active again.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I don't think that's completely unusual for crows. I haven't seen it personally (so hopefully its rare) but I have heard of them driving off birds to use their nest materials.