Birdwatching

Anyone here like to watch, and feed, the birds outside that live or migrate to your area during the winter, summer, or other times?

What type of birds do you have in your area? We have nuthatches, flickers, pileated woodpeckers, robins, bluebirds, cardinals, mockingbirds, and many other types of birds that come or visit us from time to time. We have several birdfeeders hung up outside so sometimes we have a lot of different types of birds visiting and eating. We have Hawks and other predatory birds around a lot too.

I could write a novel about this, it's one of my biggest hobbies and written right in my profile. But I will try to be short as I can be.

We have bird feeders set up, as as we live in a suburban area near a river, we get some...interesting things at times. We have more house sparrows than anything else, though. But year round, we get chickadees, downy woodpeckers, mourning doves, pigeons, cardinals, starlings and song sparrows. During fall and winter, we also have juncos and white-throated sparrows, and during about three weeks in spring, we get all sorts of odd migrants that stop by for a day or two and are gone afterwards. I don't know what all these are, it changes from year to year, but every spring we ALWAYS get white-crowned sparrows for a while. In summer, my mom's garden frequently attracts hummingbirds. Some of the odder visitors to our feeders include mallards; we have found their nests in our back yard and one year, a mother even brought her ducklings to our feeder! In fall and winter, we have occasional visits by Cooper's, sharp-shinned hawks, and kestrels, and it's fun to watch them try to nab a sparrow. On rare occasions, we have seen Bald eagles fly over our house.

Some of my more exciting bird adventures include a bike ride along the creek and seeing TWO Bald Eagles circling quite low over it. At my school, there are many walking trails in a forest, and I've gotten three views of a Pileated Woodpecker, two of them from less than 20 feet away. Not far from my school is a lake, and I see many odd ducks there and I go there as much as I can especially in spring.

This is an activity that eats up a lot of my free time 3/4s of the year.

I'd love to see all those birds in your area Caged Wolf! Yes, we also feed the hummingbirds in the spring/summer and look forward to them returning here each year. It's always sad to see them leave the area around October every year.

It is fun to see all the birds that just "stop by" on their annual treks to, or from, another area during the spring/summer. When we had our birdbath up, it was not unusual to see any number of them out there getting water to drink or taking a bath, lol. I love to watch the birds fly down to eat on the feeders and just walk around the yard hunting other food.

I don't really pay attention to the birds that come, just the sound they make, and what some look like. But what I do know is we get Cardinals, Hummingbirds, Quail, pigeons, annnnnnddd.......XD Crows, hawks.....

Birds are okay. I don't know what their names are but we have red birds, blue birds, and some type of small yellow birds. I notice them for their color. The other duller color ones, I don't notice as much.

I don't know much about the birds around here, but it's always nice to see a different one come around. Hummingbirds, woodpeckers, and blue jays are some of the most common ones here. There are some hawks and buzzards around. I think I might have seen a eagle once, but that was quite a few years ago.

I love to watch the birds in winter. They hurry and scurry so to get food before it rains or snows. You can always tell when the weather is going to get bad as the birds will be all be hurrying to get what food they can very quickly.

I haven't seen any flicker (woodpeckers) around in quite awhile. The last bird food I bought did not have those very big black sunflower type seeds that these birds love. Gotta make a note to get some of that soon. They also like bread, I think.

Thought I would bump this topic up again since Spring has arrived and the birds are migrating or traveling to warmer areas, etc.

Let's see how many different birds we all see every day.

Yesterday I saw some new birds for this area. They must have been traveling through the area on their way to some other place. It was a whole flock of cedar waxwings. They were beautiful. They looked mostly gray or brown and have a yellow rim on the bottom of their tail feathers, some red on them, and a patch of white on their belly, from what I could see. Haven't seem them so far today so they may already be gone.

What are the different kinds of birds that you saw today?

Well, since Friday, here's a somewhat comprehensive list that probably neglects a few:

-House sparrow
-Song Sparrow
-European Starling
-Cedar Waxwing
-Black-Capped and Carolina Chickadees
-Northern Cardinal
-Blue Jay
-Mallard
-Ruby Crowned Kinglet
-American Robin
-American Crow
-Sharp Shinned Hawk
-Red Tailed Hawk
-Turkey Vulture
-Red-Bellied Woodpecker
-Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
-Northern Mockingbird
-Downy Woodpecker
-Hairy Woodpecker
-Pileated Woodpecker
-Peregrine Falcon

As I'm heading to a major migration corridor (Presque Isle in Erie, PA) this coming weekend when I'm visiting friends at college, who knows what I will see.

That's a lot of avian targets you've discovered CW...I wonder if you'll have a feather in your cap before long