FreeLists / birdky / [birdky] Yard Birds

[j arnold <alee04lacebark@xxxxxxxxx>]

Today we saw at the feeders:

Rose-breasted Grosbeak, 4 males
Red Winged Blackbirds, several
Cardinals, 1 male 1 female
Carolina Chickadee 1
Grackles, many
House Finches, many
Goldfinches, 5 males 2 females
White Crowned Sparrow, 1
House Sparrow, 1 male
Blue Jays, 2
Titmouse, pair (have nest in house with 5? eggs)
Indigo Bunting, 1 male
Carolina Wren, 1
Mourning Dove, 2
One male RBG was keeping the other three off the
sunflower feeder this morning.

On the suet we saw in the last three days:

Mockingbird, 2, which busily drove most other birds
away
Red Headed Woodpecker, 2
Rose-breasted Grosbeak 1 male (once)
Red Winged Blackbirds
Downy Woodpeckers, 1 male 1 female
Redbellied Woodpecker, 1 male 1 female
Grackles
Starlings, a few
Cardinals, 1 male 1 female
Blue Jay, several
Carolina Chickadee, 1
Titmouse, pair

The oddest thing we saw was both the female Baltimore
Oriole and the Brown Thrasher eating suet. We had
never seen that before.

Other birds:

Tree Swallows, at least 10 pairs, (nests in 7 houses)
Cape May Warbler, 1
Yellow Rumped Warbler, 1
Flicker, 1
Towhee, 1
Blue Heron, several
Canada Geese, pair (found 1 broken egg in our garden)

Martins, 8 (We had 24 last year and at least 12 were
back before the freeze. There was one left for several
days after the rest left. 8 have returned)

Bluebirds, pair (box has five eggs. We have been
feeding them meal worms in a bowl on top of their box
because the weather has been cool and wet. They come
to eat when I have walked about 50 feet from their
house.)

Sunday, April 22, when we were taking our small
tractor and wagon to the very back of our 25 acres to
plant two staghorn sumac for the bluebirds, we spied
what we thought was a Red-tailed Hawk eating something
in the hay field. We stopped for a couple of minutes
to watch it, then moved on as the sun was close to
setting. We rode past it at about 30 feet and it kept
on eating as we went by. We stopped and got out of the
trailer and off the tractor, about 100 feet away. We
even walked to our planting spot and began to plant
the shrubs before it flew to a tree a few hundred feet
away, watching us. It was still in the tree as we
headed back to the house.

My husband found rabbit fur where the Hawk had been
eating that day.

One thing I have noticed this spring is the lush
growth of weeds, especially chick weed and cleavers
bedstraw, which has grown at least a foot tall in what
used to be almost every bare patch of ground we have.
It is so thick and tight that no bird could scratch in
that for grubs.

Judy Arnold
North Shelby County














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