Muddy, thanks for the egg research and thoughts.
The birds are getting ready for spring!
You're welcome!
ecnalg and greenthumb, does this bird sound familiar? http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Carolina_Wren/sounds
A pileated woodpecker pecked at one of my suet feeders today, but was gone by the time I came back with a camera. I thought it would come back, but no such luck.
Thanks for your research, Muddy. I tried all of the choices, and they were not what we keep hearing. It is definitely a 3-part call, with the accent on the middle, and usually done 3 times in a row.
How cool that you had the pileated so close. They sure are watchful and hard to photograph.
http://www.fernbank.edu/Birding/mnemonics.htm
trying this page
I'll put on my audobon CD tomorrow and run through, see if something turns up.
The fajita bird sounds similar to some bird I hear fairly often, but I can't place it.
The one I'm thinking of makes a sound I'd describe as "tuh-wheat, tuh-wheat, tuh-wheat", with an accent on wheat.
I saw some new bluebird behaviors today. A female was sitting on a tree and fluttering her wings while a male was at a suet feeder. I think she expected him to feed her, but they got startled and flew away.
I also saw a bluebird stop flying in mid-air and hover like a hummingbird for a few seconds before turning around. I think it was going to the bird bath and changed its mind when it saw me.
Too bad all birds aren't as easy to figure out as chick-a-dee-dee-dees!
Hey everybody - just trying to catch up and stay current. :)
70+ today and still seeing snowbirds. Well, they'll disappear soon enough.
Suet, grapes, wild bird seed, and some chicken bones with scraps for my crow friends. :D
Hope all's well.
A.
hi Amanda!
What kind of snowbirds are you seeing? Juncos and??
The winter visitors in my yard are mostly gone, but a few juncos and starlings are still hanging around. The bluebirds, which showed up this winter for the first time in years, have staked out an area with feeders and a little birdbath and are there pretty much the entire day.
THere's somebody hanging around these days, I think its a warbler of some kind, got the kind of squeaky wheel call thing one park ranger told us about.
Maybe a Black-and-White Warbler? http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-and-white_Warbler/sounds
Well, maybe. I have no chance at seeing it. I think there's a good reason the bird book has a section/ page on Confusing Fall Warblers. lol
We still have a bit of a crowd because so many stay in the area, plus our summer visitors are returning. Anyone tracking the hummers?
Not yet, Ric.
Have seen goldfinches, house finches, juncos, chickadees, sparrows, wrens, cardinals, blue jays, tufted titmice, doves. I'm sure I'm missing some, but, it has been pretty busy around these parts.
I don't think we will get our Hummer feeder up until we get home from Fl. Got to find that Hummer Map that tells you where they have been sited. Always fun to follow their progress on the map.
Holly, I use the Journey North site:
https://www.learner.org/jnorth/humm/
Furthest north sighting 4/1 in Hagerstown MD and 3/31 Pasadena MD very near Sallyg!
Those warm southern winds are bringing them up.
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/humm/spring2015/update040115.html
Warblers are confusing...and so are the common names people give them: Tennessee Warblers and Nashville Warblers fly through Tennessee when migrating, but don't spend any time there. Virginia's Warblers' range is only as far east as Texas; some guy named them after his wife.
The only spring bird I've seen is 1 goldfinch. There are less winter birds, so all in all it's fairly quiet at the feeders. I haven't seen any hummers yet, and haven't put a feeder up. I wonder whether they like Forsythias?
A pair of chickadees and a pair of bluebirds seem to have staked out bird houses. I saw a nest in one, but there are no eggs yet, which is fortunate because I had to take the houses down in order to double up on the raccoon baffles. The fact that a bird feeder on a pole with a 16" baffle was emptied every night led me to conclude that raccoons have no problem getting past it, so I stacked 2 baffles on each pole to make a 32" barrier. It worked for the feeder, so I'm hoping it'll protect the birds.
I just saw a flying squirrel in my backyard! It was in the peanut feeder, and we surprised each other when I went out to bring the food in for the night. It was so cute that I left some peanuts for it.
wow!
I went out a few more times to give it more shelled peanuts. It's not particularly shy!
It was gone last time I looked, but there was a raccoon out there. It left before I could see whether it had its hands in the bird feeder.
Sigh..I just learned that flying squirrels eat bird eggs and nestlings. Now it doesn't seem so cute.
Virtually everything eats, and gets eaten. Fate of every organism.
True.
I'm going to try to bring in my bird feeders at night, though, in the hopes that potential predators will stop dropping by.
I should be doing it to discourage rats anyway.
This message was edited Apr 6, 2015 7:21 PM
Don't discourage the flying squirrels...they need our help just like the birds do! Bet if they're well fed they won't rob nests.. they are pretty tiny to go up against even a songbird, why take the risk if there are peanuts? My dad has a couple that come to his windowsill in the evening, and we treasure them.
Our birds are going forth and multiplying. We still have quite a few, but not all at once.
critter, good points. Plus, it's really cute! I'm going to try to get a photo of it sitting in the peanut feeder looking out at me.
Flying squirrels are SOOO cute. I shared a cabin with one some years back. Never saw it in nice weather, but during the winter it would climb around inside at night on the log walls. Got close enough once that I actually touched it. Drove my cat nuts!
That's really neat, greenthumb! Did you ever see it glide?
I got a picture of it ! It didn't much like the flash, but I'm sure it'll be back tomorrow anyway.
Oh it is really cute.
One night I heard a commotion upstairs and knew that my cat was after the little guy. I ran up the steps to intervene and there it was, on the window frame at the top of the stairs. I stood there, not two feet from it, and we just looked at each other. It was so cute with its huge eyes, and fluffy like a plush toy that I couldn't help myself, I reached out and touched it. When I did, it jumped and glided down the stairs, landing on the floor below. My cat immediately gave chase as it scrambled up the log wall where my coats were hung on pegs. I bounded down to prevent its capture and it became a flurry of me and squirrel, cat, and coats. A memorable evening for all.
Too bad nobody captured that on video; that sounds hilarious! I'm surprised it stayed around even though you had a cat; maybe it knew it could get away from it.
Wow it just seems amazing that they can glide. What a unique thing to have seen.
The flying squirrel(s?) had nested in the upper level framing of this log cabin for many decades. They (it?) had a well-worn hole on the backside of the structure providing access to the outdoors. The only time there were appearances inside was during the winter when the interior was warm. They had no pressing reason to move about in the interior living space and could avoid household interaction without hardship, so my cat was no more a threat than any predator on the outside. I think curiosity and winter boredom were provided the impetus for interior exploration. There was a hole at the join of the log wall and the ceiling directly above the refrigerator where incursions often originated. My cat realized this and would sit for hours on winter nights on top of the fridge waiting for one to appear. Once I heard a commotion and found my cat hanging from the edge of the hole, having leaped in pursuit and caught the edge instead. Various creatures, domestic and wild, provided endless entertainment throughout my residency there.
Great stories! I didn't even know we had flying squirrels native to our region.
They are ubiquitous in this region, but because they are nocturnal they are seldom seen. They are supposedly as numerous as gray squirrels. Rare treat to see them, cherish it if you do.
I've never seen one in the wild.
dad calls his buddy "Pedro." There's also a "Mrs. Pedro" and "Flash," so named because he's easily spooked, so usually all we see of him is a "flash" of white underbelly as he leaps from the windowsill or wall or tree branch and vanishes into the night.
Holly didn't remember seeing one in the "wild". At a soccer game down by the river someone spotted a nest in a small tree. The young were just large enough to be looking about. Someone picked one up and it was more curious than afraid. Soon a lot of the kids were holding and Oh and awing over them. They were all put back in the nest and mama probably relocated that night.
This is the first one (I'm assuming it's always the same one) I've seen around here. I didn't really know what it was, but concluded it wasn't a rat so I looked up flying squirrels.
I've thought about getting a camera to record all of the activity in my backyard at night.