Cause its been a while
Birds
Bird of Prey
I’ve been bad about posting the photos from the trail cameras lately, but to be honest they’ve not been overly interesting. I put out a feed block in an attempt to attract in the deer and turkeys, and instead distracted the regular birds from my feeders. This means 100+ photos a week of chickadees and cardinals…..till yesterday when I checked the cameras and found this following set of photos:
The general concensus on the birder forum I posted the pics to is that this is probably a Coopers Hawk, though there was enough question that it MIGHT be a large Sharpshinned. Made my day though!
Starlings
The things you notice when you’re home unexpectedly lol.
Anyone have any ideas on how to keep the starlings off the suet without discouraging the woodpeckers? I know they sell cages to keep out the big birds, but I don’t want to discourage the red-bellied woodpeckers who enjoy it as well, and I don’t want to turn it soley upside down feeders only as all sorts of other birds feed on it too. I tried leaving it empty for several days, and they were slow to come back, but here they are……and unfortunetly there really isn’t a good angle to take a pellet gun to them…..
More birds
Now all of the above are common to the area, though I’ve never actually seen the Grosbeaks before, but this last little guy is highly uncommon to the area, he’s a Harris’s Sparrow. Infact he’s so rare, that when I reported my sighting I got an email asking me to send my pictures so they could verify my ID!
Blue Jay
With the cold snap we went ahead and put out the first of the feeders for the year, and because I find the Jays fun to watch I poured a bunch of peanuts on the ground underneath.
Didn’t take them even an hour to find the peanuts!
That moment
When I got home from work today the heat powered fans had been knocked off the top of the woodburning stove. Didn’t think much of it, picked them up, made a mental note to figure out which animal was responsible and finished putting away the groceries.
A while later I hear what sounded like a bird flapping its wings against the window. Except there was no bird.
A while later I noticed that Trouble seemed awefully facinated with the top of the stove. I figured I’d found the culprit, chased her off, and went on with my evening.
A while later I heard that sound again.
Except this time it sounded like it was coming from the stove.
A moment of brilliance, I opened the stove door to see wtf?
A moment of flight as the House Sparrow shot for the door.
A moment of ‘holy crap’ as Trouble made a flying leap and caught it on her first jump.
A moment of ‘uhoh’ as Apollo convinced Trouble to give him the bird, and let it go.
Another moment of ‘holy crap’ as Apollo duplicated Trouble’s jump.
Apollo was a good boy and took it to his crate to eat, as I racked my brain trying to remember if sparrows carried anything that might be dangerous to him. Except he was baffled by the feathers, so I was able to convince him to trade for a treat.
Sigh.
Why are the dandelions moving??
As I was starting coffee just now I looked out the kitchen window to see a bunch of bright yellow dots hopping around the back yard. It took me a second to realize I was seeing Goldfinches and not animated dandelions. What can I say, no glasses, no coffee….there’s at least 10 of them out there hunting for bugs in the yard. They’re welcome to all they can catch!