4:27 AM – As mentioned before, peanuts are very popular, particularly in freezing weather. Here are a couple of montage videos of heavy traffic on the platform feeder.
In the first clip (in order of appearance) we have a Bluebird, male Cardinal, Brown-headed Nuthatch, White Breasted Nuthatch, female Cardinal.
Second clip has a Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Sparrows and a Dark-eyed Junco.
4:02 AM – Brief video close-up of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.
The birds are getting used to us. Here’s a White-breasted Nuthatch landing on the platform feeder, while I’m sitting a few feet away. It was cold and I had a poncho on.
One more, to make up for the brevity of the first two clips. Here’s a Cardinal and a Dark-eyed Junco feeding. Nothing exciting happens. It’s that way a lot of the time with the birds. They just eat, excrete and flap around, mostly. Every now and then they squabble. That’s life in the wild.
3:20 AM – We don’t know too much about the Dark-eyed Juncos. Wwe’ve only seen them with the other birds a few times. Today we found out they can be a little aggressive, at least toward Sparrows. We’re not sure they’d try this with a Cardinal.
Red-bellied Woodpecker is heavy enough to partially activate the anti-squirrel mechanism. He has to approach the feeding port sideways to fit his head/beak in. The Red-bellied is the biggest local resident bird that visits the hanging feeders – the Doves stick to the platform.
2:22 AM – Bluebird mealworm brunch, attended by up to four Bluebirds at a time. I wonder how many would cluster around if the feeder was bigger.
We’re seeing these Dark-eyed Junco’s everyday now. They’re not the most colorful bird, and they’re not really that interesting to watch – they just sit and eat. But they’re good-hearted, and behave themselves, so they deserved a video. Just one video. Here it is.
3:13 AM – I think the bird at the far end of the feeder is a Dark-eyed Junco. The colors are right, and the beak looks like the pictures on the Cornell website. The other birds are the Tufted Titmouse and Pine Warbler.
One of the semi-feral cats that roam the neighborhood. Sometimes they catch a bird, once right in front of the camera. We hate to see that, but there’s not much we can do to stop it. It’s just Nature.
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).
1:04 AM – This is the first video we posted, back in early November, 2016. All of the early posts, from the first month, were consolidated into one called Bird Videos – Lots of Them, then deleted. The Bird Videos etc post is the now the earliest one, dated 11/15/2016. This video was labelled Song Sparrow Bathing.
Another early video, from the first month, is this one of a Dark Eyed Junco. We haven’t seen one of these for a while.
And this early one, a Cardinal skating on ice to get a drink. Last winter we came out frequently and broke up the ice on freezing days.
4:22 AM – Where are they now? These are some of the birds that visited for one day, or maybe a week, then flew off somewhere. Maybe they were migrating, and we’ll see them again in the Fall. Maybe they got a better offer at a Foodcourt down the block. Anyway, here are videos of their visits.
Indigo Bunting
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Goldfinch
Easter Towhee
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Cedar Waxwing
Dark-eyed Junco
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Redwing Blackbird
And finally, our favorite, the Brown Headed Cowbirds
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.