Dec18, 2010

Saw my first adult male goldfinch, feeding on thistle sock in my backyard. Was beginning to think thistle sock was a hoax, but he's been at it for an hour!

Sept.5, 2010

Today I put up my hummingbird feeder, filled with 1:4 sugar/water solution, and was blessed to see hummers almost immediately swarming it. How can this be? I only bought the feeder at the end of the migration last year, and it has been down since the last sippage in late spring... that is so cool, that there must be a host of hummers migrating through unseen, under-appreciated, yet very present.
I just had a visitor to the hummingbird feeder I've never seen before: a medium sized bird with brown/olivish head and back, peach chest and undertail coverlets, cream belly, and 2 distinct wing bars. The eye was black. The bird was sipping from feeder, ignoring the seed/feeder 3 meters away.
The yard was filled with the usual offerings: doves (mourning, white-winged, Eurasian), blue jays, cardinals, common grackles, house sparrows.
I will check Sibley and enter below my visitor...

I'm fairly confident it was a female oriole, though none of my books had a match to the bird I saw: it was much more orange than yellow, and back was darker than what I see for most of the pics on the internet, so I chalk that up to natural variation. Now it seems I need to start sticking orange slices up in my trees, which they feed on; maybe a male will grace me with its presence, too.

April 20, 2010

Before work today I was blessed by the appearance of a beautiful indigo bunting feeding on seeds beneath my feeder. The white-wing doves and h.sparrows had already visited and did their thrashing beforehand.

April 18, 2010

The Morus alba is bearing fruits now, and the avian visitors are helping themselves; it's one of my favorite seasonal experiences--that and the first cold-front of autumn. I praise God that He saved my diseased tree.
I was truly impressed with the rose-breasted grosbeak yesterday; the cedar waxwings continue to flutter and whistle in swarms, mixed with my 3 species of native dove, blue jays, cardinals, house sparrows, red-bellied woodpecker, starlings, and mockingbird. Still awaiting the first hummingbirds at feeder, but fear I may be bypassed this year as it is getting closer to summer. I thought I heard one tweeeerrr overhead, but my hearing is waning with age.