Category: Birds

Ballistic Bird

Flying with your Wings Folded

 

 

I was taking a photograph of sparrows and goldfinches at my feeder during a rare lower Alabama snowstorm a few years ago. By sheer happenstance a female cardinal flew through the frame and demonstrated that birds are not always flapping while flying. She is out of focus but it is clearly obvious that her wings are fully folded in. It is probably an energy-saving technique. I have seen small birds fly through chain link fences without stopping. I would guess they use the same ballistic technique.

Cardinal Hour

 

Cardinals are some of the favorite visitors to our feeders. Their family interactions are entertaining and they seem to form long-lasting pairs. The male will shell out sunflower seeds and offer them to his mate. On occasion I have seen a female offer a seed to a male. Once the young cardinals have fledged, they will follow “Dad” around and beg for food, fluttering their wings, calling and opening their beaks wide. The bird at the top of our site is a young cardinal, colored similar to the female but with a dark beak.

We have noticed that cardinals are the last birds we see out feeding in the evening. We call it Cardinal Hour though it is closer to 15 minutes or so. All the other birds have disappeared for the day but the redbirds are still busily cracking sunflower seeds. It leaves us wondering why this is so. Do they see better in the dimmer light or perhaps feel as if their daytime adversaries are less likely to be present. They are also usually the first birds seen in the early morning.

The male cardinal photographed in bright sunlight looks as if he thinks it is no one’s business why he stays out late.

Raking Leaves

If only we could train them to do the whole yard.

Every fall the leaves fall from the trees and cover our yard like many other people’s. We tend to collect some of the leaves to use as mulch in the backyard garden. The rest are usually allowed to remain where they are once mowing season ends. We are just not motivated enough to do anything with them. However, this feeling is not universal. A well cleared spot always develops in the middle of the front yard. The birds do not like leaves under their birdfeeder. For them, the leaves get in the way of more important activities.

Hummingbirds: Remembrance of Summer

Winter brings us birds that do not nest in our area. Some are just passing through; others are regular winter visitors that come for our bird feeders. We do miss our summer residents, especially the hummingbirds. This year our first hummer arrived on March 20th, later than usual. We enjoyed their antics (and wars) all summer. In October we start keeping careful notes to track our last sighting for the year which is usually sometime before the 14th. It is our practice to leave the feeders up until the end of the month which turned out to be a good thing this year. After a gap of several days we had a sudden flurry of visitors, 2 or 3 at a time with our last sighting on October 28th. Bad weather somewhere must have delayed this last group but we were glad to see them for whatever reason.


This hummingbird was a summer resident in a surprisingly peaceful mood.

 

Tail Identification: May 16, 2018

Hiding on the far side of a feeder doesn’t always work.

With bird feeders, and seed blocks especially, you really begin to learn how to identify birds by their tails. Some birds spread their tails out while others neatly stack them. Then there is the positon that they hold their tail in (up, down, straight out). After a bit of time, you become familar enough with your local birds to be able to make a pretty good guess at identification from just the tail. This particular picture shows some of the body as well.The bird in question is a Tufted Titmouse. The above picture is from one of our other feeders a couple of years ago. In the case of the Tufted Titmouse, it is the color combined with the mostly stacked straight out position that typically gives it away.

Popular Seed Block

There is something in there that they like

A couple of years ago we started hanging a Pennington Seed block on a pole outside one of our windows. It seems like every bird in the area, including a number of surprising suspects has come by to try it out. Above is a Northern Mockingbird. At first it was only one, but the first one convinced its opposite number that there was something good here, and since that time I have frequently seen pairs of Mockingbirds visiting the seed block.

Here we have a Tufted Titmouse and a Red-headed woodpecker on the seed block at the same time. Once it is eaten down, we move what is left to one of the tray feeders, and it typically doesn’t take very long for them to find it and finish it off. The recent snows had an interesting side effect. Normally, the local chipping sparrows prefer to eat from the ground or trays. They will also use standard perches. They would come over and land on top of the seed block’s cage and try to reach the top of the seed block. However, when the snow covered everything else, they discovered it was possible to hang on to the side of the cage and get at the only visible seed (everything else was under snow). Since that time, several sparrows have remembered this, and they have continued to cling to the cage to eat. This has led to a second variety of jailbird.I am sorry about the lower quality. I didn’t want to scare it off, and the sparrows seem to be a bit “nervous” about eating here. Don’t worry, it had no trouble getting back out again without help.