5:06 AM – That young Red-bellied Woodpecker has head feathers coming in. It’s not a particularly attractive stage of growing up, like human adolescence.
For a while we didn’t see purple finches around here. Now a few of them are showing up. This one is taking his time with a sunflower seed. I expect in a few months we’ll have crowds of them, as we did in Spring.
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.
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).
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.
2:28 AM – Red-bellied Woodpeckers. They’ll show up at any of the feeders, but the suet is their favorite, for both young and old.
There are several Blue Jays using the platform feeder these days. A few of these are the new young ones. I wonder if they’ll stay around, or move on to their own yards.
3:27 AM – The young Red-bellied Woodpecker at the mealworm feeder. His crest gets a little redder every day.
Bluebird with unusual markings.
Blue Jay after being caught in the rain.
4:39 AM – This is clearly the season for young birds. I think this one is a juvenile Blue Jay, based on his size and indistinct color and pattern of feathers. We’re new to back yard bird watching, and we’re still learning about these things. We have seen plenty of juvenile Bluebirds, but this is really the first Jay that I’m pretty sure is a young one.
The Red-bellied Woodpecker doesn’t do much platform feeding, but this young one stopped by for a few minutes. Note that the top of his head is getting a little red.
The little Carolina Chickadee probably got it’s feathers ruffled in a rain shower that passed through that afternoon. He’s so small, with a tiny beak, that he has to break the mealworms apart to eat them. We like chickadees.
3:23 AM – This Red-bellied Woodpecker appears to be a young (immature) one, as indicated by the gray (instead of red) head, and not a molting one. This is the first of these we’ve seen.
Most of the Grackles have moved on, but there are two or three that still show up at the feeders. We can live with that, since they don’t consume any more than the doves or blue jays etc. It’s only when the numbers get out of control that we try to move them on.
None of these bluebirds at the mealworm feeder are fully grown, judging by the various immature plumage on them. At this point we’ve lost track of the generations.
4:49 AM – This platform feeder drama went on for almost six minutes. Two doves versus one Blue Jay, for control of the bird seed. At one point they tried sharing, each pecking up some seed. One dove flew off, and the other moved in to take his place. Eventual he went for the Blue Jay. The Jay, however, didn’t fly away. He just retreated a few feet along the rail and kept on staring. Then he advance to the water and the Dove broke, and flew off. It was interesting , but I doubt anything was permanently settled.
The new suet we’re using is very popular with the customers, drawing birds that don’t ordinarily feed at the suet cage. I like these two videos (combined) because the show the difference between the biggest and smallest suet fans, a Red-bellied Woodpecker and a Carolina Chickadee.
At first I thought this might be the first Blue Jay visitor to the suet cage. but it turns out there were two other visits filmed. Still a rare event though. This one looks like an immature one.