The Birds

We’ve really enjoyed watching the various birds who visit our feeders. Until today, we’d logged 18 species, to which we can now add two more! We were graced today by a Brown Thrasher and a male Eastern Towhee. I wasn’t as quick as the birds, so I couldn’t get good pics of either of them. We’ve had one or two red-winged blackbirds before (usually a pair), but today we had a small flock of them! I counted at least 4 males with their mates. The cardinals tend to hang around later than most other birds. Around 5pm, there were 8 still hanging around between the neighbor’s dogwood and our feeders, plus some more out on the trees in the common area.

Of course, getting lots of feeder traffic also means we’re starting to get a lot of birds who aren’t as welcome. Because of the snow cover, we had a number of brown-headed cowbirds (not so bad), european starlings (semi-tolerable in small numbers since they only fight among themselves and leave other birds alone), and common grackles (argh!). don’t like grackles. in fact, we hates-es them. We hadn’t had but one or two grackles until today, which tells us that once the snow cover is gone and they can find their own food, they may go away. But. Still seems as if it’s time for some protective measures to keep the nuisance birds away.

At one point late this afternoon, it looked positively Hitchcock-esque out there!

Every black blob you see in this picture — check the tree on the left, the two trees in the distance, and the black blobs on the ground that you can see through the deck posts — is a bird. mostly starlings and grackles. i hope it warms up soon so they can go eat elsewhere!