4:21 AM – The clip starts with the finch and Cardinal peacefully sharing the feeder, and ends with the finch chasing off the other finches. Like a little feathered hog.
A Carolina Wren on the suet feeder. You can see these little acrobats at all the different feeders. They’re not picky eaters
Lots of Blue Jays. We caught four on video, and D saw a few more behind the camera. I wonder what the exact count is. We really have to focus on the Blue Jay ID project.
5:01 AM – Mother Cardinal feeding a young one. This is the second immature Card we’ve seen.
The back feathers of this Cardinal is kind of weird looking. I hope it’s part of the molting-refeathering process.
Just for a change, here are a couple of wet Blue Jays.
2:56 AM – Another Sunday, another Blast from the Past.
We haven’t see a bluebird for about a month. From April, 2017, here are a couple of videos of the first crop of young ones, and an adult supervisor.
From November 2016, a sparrow bathing. You can’t tell from the video, but it was really cold that day. The sparrow didn’t care.
4:42 AM – At the beginning of this clip notice the Blue Jay dropping a seed, and trying to snatch it out of the air. For some reason that’s a very human gesture. Next, another Jay lands, and they have a beak duel. Then a longer sequence with a Jay and a Cardinal getting some feathers back on her bald head. I still think Cards are more aggressive when they’re molting and irritable.
The Mourning Doves have hogged the platform feeder for so long this Summer that the other birds seem to have gotten used to it. The cheeky little finch and the Jay ignore the bigger bird.
5:57 AM – We moved some feeders around, placing one of the Squirrel Busters on a tree. Although the Busters are very effective, when they’re close to a tree trunk they’re more accessible to critters, like this midnight raccoon. In the first part he’s able to get some seed, then he trips the shut-down lever and becomes discouraged. For now, anyway. We’ll have to put hot pepper seed in these feeders, eventually.
Dove against dove at the platform feeder. One of these looks smaller and younger than the other, so it’s probably a case of teaching a young Mourning Dove his place.
2:42 AM – We’ll start with the Blue Jays doing some synchronized gobbling. Be sure to watch all the way, at the end of the clip is a high speed version.
More finch action. A male and female Purple Finch are feeding, and are joined by a female Cardinal. They get along just fine until a male Cardinal shows up on the water dish, and chases the Purple away. The Cardinal is molting bad – maybe he was irritable.
3:58 AM – This Red-bellied Woodpecker, the juvenile with the gray head, seems to have some new feathers coming in. We hope that’s what’s happening, and not an adult molting. Though there’s nothing wrong with molting. Some birds do it several times a year. But it looks sad. Here’s the woodpecker on the cylinder feeder, then making a rare visit to the deck platform.
We’re seeing more finches these days. It’s hard to tell the House Finch (red feathers) from the Purple Finch (purple feathers). They look pretty much the same to me, very often, and the cameras are not completely reliable about capturing the true shade/hue etc. Anyway, here’s a couple of brief clips of finches at the platform feeder, eating and bickering. This one is almost certainly a Purple.
4:32 AM – Our camera caught this mother Cardinal and young one early in the morning, before light. We’ve seen the adults feed each other, but this is the first time a Card brought a youngster to the feeder for a meal. Notice how at the end of the video the chick tries to feed itself.
The Mourning Doves continue to dominate the platform feeder. The little House Finch in the following clip is showing a lot of spirit, but he’s fighting out of his class.
2:02 AM – The young Red-bellied Woodpecker is still around. Those Red-bellies win the prize of biggest and strongest beaks.
More from the cylinder feeder. Here’s an acrobatic White Breasted Nuthatch, and a couple of Carolina Chickadees.
3:27 AM – Sunday is the day for Videos of the Past. We’ll start with this one from November 2016, a Red-bellied Woodpecker and Cardinal peacefully sharing the water trough.
This is also from November, our first month. At that time we identified with bird as a Dark-eyed Junco. Just to be sure, we checked again, and sure enough, it looks like the pictures of the Junco on the Cornell Website. According to them, this bird is only here during the Winter. Not a spectacular looking bird, but rare (around here).