Spring birds

We are seeing the regulars (Robin's, blackbirds, and even Bluebirds here in Iowa. I've heard turkeys gobbling and our buzzards are back floating in the skies. Things seem to be normal here.....

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The finches are turning yellow here.

We have Ccardinals year round, but they've been singing loudly, as of late.

Plenty of robins.

While not birds, the peepers started their orgy noise last week.

 

We also have year round cardinals. I have heard Robin's but haven't seen any. Chaz posted a pic of one about a week ago. Peeppers going strong. Leeks are up on north facing hills but just starting to peek through the leaves on south.

 

Betterer

 

Spring birds are singing as usual around here.
Even the goshawk that squawked every time we walked out the front door last year is back.

 

Winter birds were the pits here with the exception of Goldfinches which were unbelievable. Now the goldfinches have tapered off and we seem to have a abundance of chickadees which were missing over winter. Had 1 robin the other day in the rain. Aside from a few grackles things are quiet here too.

 

I filled both feeders mid January . Still half full. They weren’t even hit till about 3 weeks ago. I’ve seen some nut hatch and a pair of chickadees. That’s it. Every morning there are grackles in the tress above the feeders and they aren’t even hitting them . That is strange . They are usually pigs. Have had robins since early Feb.

 

All of the sudden my bird feeder refilling kicked into high gear! Through the winter it seemed I refilled the suet and sunflower seeds about every 4-5 days. The last week and a half it seems I have been getting about 3 days for the suet and less than 2 for the seeds! Have seen recently: Brown Creepers, Chickadees (Black Capped and Chestnut Backed), Crows (which I discourage), Starlings, Kinglets, Juncos, Nut hatches (Red and White Breasted), Robins in the yard (there are a few stay year round), Sparrows on the ground, Towhees on the ground, Stellar and Scrub jays, Varied Thrush on the ground, Wrens, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers and Flickers at the suet. Saw a Merlin (I think) yesterday that took a pass at the small birds but did not score. Various Finches are showing up (greedy little beggars that just cover the feeder) as well as a host of LBBs (Little Brown Birds) that I can't seem to classify. We have several Grey Squirrels and a pair of Douglas Fir Squirrels also. No Chipmunks so far this year. No shortage of birds here!

 

First spring here at this new place. We had Robins all winter, geese and swans are back. Mourning doves showed up. I haven't seen any warblers yet. I have seen 4 species of woodpeckers out back. Bluebirds passed through a few weeks ago. No swallows yet. Turkeys are breaking out of the large winter flock and out exploring. We had kingbirds and pee wees last summer. Red wing blackbirds showed up a few weeks back.

I must have bought 80lbs of seed this winter. Once the black oil seed is done, feeders will be taken down.

 

I usually taper off feeding also. Gets to a point where the Starlings mob the suet and the Finches empty the feeders in a day!

 

Once starlings and grackles show up, they do a number on suet. I have a suet feeder that hangs upside down. The birds I want there, figure it out. The other birds can't figure it out.

 

I'll have to try that. The redwing blackbirds and jays clean them out in no time

 

If you have a basic suet cage you can fix it to a board and hang it that way. There's diy out there.

When I change over to the upside down, I hang it at 45deg, for a week or so then full upside down. It gives the woodpeckers time to find and adjust.

 

I saw a Robin on my way home from work today. It was in Illinois but I'm just a hop skip jump away.

 

A lot of the birds I mentioned in my post are here year round because of our mild winters. One bird we don't have in our suburban setting is turkeys. I envy you that! There is a game farm a few miles away that raised pheasants that would escape so we saw them occasionally but they stopped raising them. Another bird we don't have is Grackles. We had them everywhere in Georgia but I mention them in WA State and no one knows what they are. Don't miss them much!

I like that! I will give it a try for late season suet! Nuthatches, in particular, don't seem to discriminate between up or down

Very thoughtful of you!

 

Mine gets emptied in 1 day.

 

I haven't seen a pheasant here in years. They were pretty common when I was growing up. I saw a partridge maybe 15 years ago. I really think the turkeys pushed the other two species out. The local turkey flock is probably over 50 birds. We had 23 go through the yard this weekend. They left the seed alone this winter. They are pretty dumb birds stopping traffic quite frequently here.

 

I saw our first spring robins this past weekend coinciding with the frost starting to go out of the ground.

At the feeders around the house we have our cardinals, juncos (under feeders), nuthatches, wood peckers, purple finches and chickadees, but their numbers have down a bit this this year.

Up north at and under the feeders we had our black capped and boreal chickadees, gray jays, bluejays (more than normal), pine siskins and a ruffed grouse now and again. Pine grosbeaks were not prevalent. We used to get dozens of them daily.

I wire my deer carcass up in the tree above the feeder each fall and this is is stripped bare by President's day weekend. We usually get a pine martin or two working on this, and this year was no exception.