Backyard Birding

With our summer vacation already in-progress, I admittedly found myself feeling a bit out of sorts with not having hours each day dedicated to learning with my children. I have them each doing 2 hours of some kind of language activity, be it reading or writing, daily to keep their minds sharp and their creativity skills strong. I get little resistance.

Reezle has been using her new free time to observe, take notes on, and read more about the local birds.

We're trying new seed varieties in the feeders to see which birds show up for each mix, and so far the only thing we've found is that the American Goldfinches love the mix with the sunflower in it (actually, they all do - you've never seen a feeder get emptied so fast) and have been noticeably absent since we switched.

Also, the Mourning Doves really like whatever the other birds are dropping on the ground from the current seed mix; they've been out there pecking at the ground almost constantly for the past few days, sometimes as many as four of them at once! The closest I'd previously seen one, other than in books and online, was on the power lines out front of our home. They're very cool.


Our most common visitors, at least for now, are House Finches (there is a male on the left of the feeder) and House Sparrows (right).

A couple of my personal favorite visitors to the feeder have to be the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak and Northern Cardinal. They are gorgeous, their calls are beautiful, and they have such personality!

And I only recently (since Reezle's interest in birding was sparked) learned that female cardinals look quite a bit different in color than their male counterparts. Check this out:


That's Redfeather (top photo) and Ruby (bottom photo), two of our most common visitors. Yes, we name them. And no, we're not 100% certain we're not calling forty different cardinals by the same name. Oh well. But we do know Star for certain - he was the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak on the pole for the feeder a few photos up. He was named Star because all of the white spots on his otherwise stark black feathers make him look like the stars in the night sky. He's the only one we've seen like him, and he has a major attitude. We love him anyway.

My bird post wouldn't be complete if I didn't share this story. About 12 years ago while rollerblading on a park trail, I saw a black bird, which I thought at first was a baby crow, take flight. When it spread its wings, I saw the most beautiful red and yellow on its wings. I never saw one again until my daughter started birding and they began showing up regularly at the feeders. They are fairly common in our area, and are called Red-Winged Blackbirds. Cool, right?

Yes, I'll be blogging more about birds over the summer. I didn't include Yellow Warblers, Blue Jays, or even a Robin in this post! It seems my daughter's interest is now a shared one.