[texbirds-freelists] [texbirds] Yard birding this week, few arrivals more departures

From: Joseph Kennedy <josephkennedy36@xxxxxxxxx>
To: texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2012 06:23:25 -0500

My little group of white-throated sparrows departed about 30 minutes before
dark Thursday evening. I watched them go. They worked their way up in a
pecan tree and spent 20 minutes or so chasing and fiddling around in a
tangle of broken branches then worked up near the top and headed up into
the north and climbing.

A large group of goldfinches arrived last week end and stayed through
Tuesday. Some left gradually and the last birds left Friday night. For a
bit I had more goldfinches than at any time during the winter. Yellow males
left before the plainer marked birds.

Several blue-gray gnatcatchers arrived at the same time as the goldfinches
joining my single bad-plumaged bird. They fed on some sort of small flying
insect among the pollen anthers on pecans. They all left on Friday night
too.

Chuck-wills widow calling this morning at 3:50.

The red-tailed hawks are sitting on the nest and very inconspicuous. Only
see a low flying bird headed on a direct flight in the direction of the
nest. Removal of dead trees from a nearby yard did not cause them to leave.

The 3 pairs of titmice are at the nest as are the chickadees. Something may
have happened at one chickadee nest as one bird of a pair was begging from
the other. Jays and cardinals also sitting. This was the first winter I had
a flock of cardinals versus numbers of paired cardinals. The last birds in
the flock are having much difficulty with understanding the concept of
territories as they try to feed.

Again this year there have been no inchworms in the oak trees and
apparently none in the pecans that I have seen. I did have the first
spiders on my balcony last week since last summer. But a good thing is that
there are no mosquitoes around either and the wasps that normally hunt
spiders are totally absent although there were still good numbers around
into last fall.

Some of the pecan trees that lost all their leaves last year and apparently
died did not die. They are greening up in inverse order of losing their
leaves. However, the largest (and first shedding) still appears dead and
other large branches have died back after starting to green. So there may
be more losses as it gets hotter and the trees need to move more water
through damaged channels.

--
Joseph C. Kennedy
on Buffalo Bayou in West Houston
Josephkennedy36@xxxxxxxxx

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[texbirds-freelists] [texbirds] Yard birding this week, few arrivals more departures

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