Tag Archives: Cardinals

Saturday – 12.17.2016

1:00 PM – It’s cloudy today, so no sprinkler action. However, it was pretty busy. Here are some videos of birdbath traffic:

Here’s a good close-up of Mr. Cardinal eating a sunflower seed. Powerful beak:

This one caught a Bluebird and a Blue-gray Gnat Catcher:

Here’s a robin getting a drink. I’d mistakenly thought robins passed through Alabama on their way to…not sure where. But it turns out that Alabama is one of their destinations, particularly North and Central Alabama. So, presumably, this one is here for the winter.

Friday – 12.16.2016

4:30 PM – Later this day the solar sprinkler arrived. D put it in the new bath, and it started spouting water right away. As long as the sun is shining, it works. Unfortunately I didn’t save a video of the sprinkler in action, but I’m sure there will be plenty in the next few days. In the meantime, here’s Mr. Cardinal and the (non-sprinkling) solar sprinkler, when the clouds were out. It took a few hours, but the birds got used to it. It does take up quite a bit of room, but there’s enough space for baths etc, and hopefully, showers.

6:20 AM – Our new birdbath arrived yesterday. It’s a replacement for the disappointing ‘tip-bowl-to-clean’ model. That one was almost impossible to secure to the rail properly, so tipping it up to empty the water detached it. Really disappointing. This new one is a simpler, cheaper model. It’s got a deep (relatively) indentation in the center of it, which should let us use the solar sprinkler we got. See video for it’s first day in use (first hour actually). We got a couple of Purple Finches and a White Throated Sparrow trying it out.

Saturday – 12.10.2016

7:20 AM – There wasn’t much new bird action this week. It was mostly the same backyard residents drinking and bathing etc. The big news is the failure of our new birdbath, the fancy one that’s supposed to let us tip out the water without detaching from the rail. It’s bigger and deeper than the other, but the attachment hardware doesn’t really work. We decided to replace it with a low-tech version. But we’re also adding one of those solar powered sprinklers. Hope it works the way it’s supposed to. If it does, the birds should like it.

The temperature dropped below freezing, so we had ice on the bird baths. Here’s a couple of videos of the birds coping with it. This morning I went out and broke through to the water for them.

Bluebird, finch and sparrows on ice:

Cardinal on ice:

Tuesday – 11.29.2016

The first serious rain in months last night. All the birds and squirrels were on duty this morning, so I assume they weathered the storm. The cameras caught Mr. Cardinal taking a long bath, about three minutes. That’s pretty long for a bird to stay in the water. The videos are below. WordPress (or the webhost) wouldn’t let me upload the three minute version, so the separate files are provided.

The other video was Mrs. Cardinal bathing  as a White-throated Sparrow waited, perched on the bath rim. As she left, he hopped in.

There’s been a lot more bathing than usual the last few days. I wonder if it has something to do with the baths getting leaves and twigs in them, and after last night, a good dose of rain water. Maybe the tap water chemicals puts them off. That calls for some research.

Three videos of Mr. Cardinal bathing:

Mrs. Cardinal and the White-throated Sparrow bathing:

 

 

Monday – 11.28.2016

7:40 AM – No visits from the raccoon last night. He’s interesting to watch, something new, but I’d just as soon he didn’t come up on the porch. I should probably set up the dogs wading pool, down at the far end of the yard. That would give him the water he probably really needs (due to the drought), but keep him away.

6:00 PM – Two short videos from today’s bird action are below. It was a windy day, and both birdbaths got some leaves and twigs in them. This didn’t seem to bother any of the birds. In fact, the Carolina Chickadees wallowed on them when they were bathing. They are very vigorous bathers.

Purple Finch, Cardinal and White-throated Sparrow sharing a drink of water:

And more Chickadee bathing:

 

Bird Videos – Lots of Them – BUT NOT REALLY

A number of videos we took at the beginning of this project will not display due to the uncertainty of the Word Press storage system. We did some research but couldn’t find a solution, so we are reposting them, one and two at a time, starting in November 2017. They will be the bonus ‘Retro’ videos displayed after the current bird and critter activity.