2:01 AM – The tail end of Hurricane Irma was supposed to pass through here yesterday, but really nothing much happened. In spite of forecasts of winds in the 30’s and up, all we got were some gentle breezes and gentle rain showers. We’d taken in all the feeders and cameras, but went ahead and put the deck platform setup back into operation.
The “storm” didn’t stop the birds from eating. We got video of this wet Cardinal family having lunch.
Another survivor of the weather – this Carolina Wren seem more interested in chirping and hopping than eating. Something must be going on out of camera range.
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.
7:34 AM – This is a video of an immature Cardinal. According to Cornell Lab website, the juveniles can have dark beaks like this one, plus the dull colored feathers. With the number of Cardinals we see, it’s surprising we don’t run across more of these.
We just got a new camera to replace one that failed. This is it’s first outing, capturing a Carolina Wren at the mealworm feeder. The camera has sound, unlike the previous one.
2:41 AM – Nice video of a Carolina Wren eating mealworms.
I’ve been showing videos of this guy, assuming he’s an immature Red-bellied Woodpecker. I sure hope I’m right, and he’s not a full grown one with ‘no-headfeather’ syndrome. This is our first year keeping track of these birds, and a lot is still new to us. No, looking back at previous videos of this guy, he looks young – smaller and with imperfectly patterned feathers. He just looks immature, though less now than before.
2:10 AM – Another Retro-Sunday, featuring videos from the archives. We started recording and posting these in November of last year, and have only missed a few days. That’s a lot of bird (and squirrel and raccoon) action. These are a few of the earliest ones.
First, a Carolina Wren drinking and bathing.
This one shows Mrs. Cardinal bathing after nudging a little sparrow out of the way.
1:15 AM – Downy Woodpecker going after the suet cylinder with lots of determination and energy.
Carolina Wren discovers that there the mealworm feeder is completely empty, but returns several times for a thorough search, just to be sure. He finally got hungry enough to stop by the suet feeder for dinner, but we recorded several vain attempts to find mealworms throughout the afternoon. These birds really like mealworms, even the dried (as opposed to live) ones.
We’ve had lots of posts about molting, particularly with the Cardinals. They seem to have particularly dramatic time of it, what with the naked black head and general patchy, scruffy look. It seems as if they’ve been molting for a long time. Lately we’ve seen Cardinals that looks so severely afflicted that we’re becoming concerned that it might be some disease, and not the natural process of feather replacement. We did some research, and compared images from the Cornell website and others, and have been reassured. No matter how scrofulous the red birds look, it’s almost certainly normal plumage replacement.
We were going to present videos of pathetic looking Cardinals, but decided to spare everyone. Except for this video, of a sad Card sharing with doves. The doves look kind of sorry for him.
At the time this was recorded, March 22, 2017, I didn’t realize that a molting bird can lose his tail feathers. This Carolina Wren was not the victim of anything as dramatic as a last second escape from a pouncing cat. Probably.
Here’s one from March 21, 2017 of a bluebird at the ‘suet’ feeder. That’s actually compressed seeds, not suet, but we got used to calling it suet because it’s served in the suet cage. The bluebird seems to like it just fine.
We like this one because of the squirrels panicked expression. It’s a joke because we never made a serious try to hurt one. Even when we used the slingshot and a steel ball bearing, the shot was so weak (on purpose) it just bounced off a squirrels back – he didn’t even move, just sat there until he was ready to scamper off. From March, 28, 2017.
3:10 AM – We’re not sure which Cardinal is which. There seem to be at least three males, at different stages of molting. These videos were made over two days. Can birds re-grow feathers that fast? If not, it looks like three males.This calls for some serious study.
I can’t tell if these Carolina Wrens (or maybe it’s just one bird) are molting or just wet. I think it’s probably just wet. It’s been raining off and on for a couple of days, and I see wet and ruffled feathers, but no bald spots.