Pheeder Birds
Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”
If you fill it, they will come
Nancy and I returned to Sugar Hill in mid-January after spending the holidays with our son and his family in Terre Haute. We soon had our bird feeder hanging from a pole placed so as to provide optimal viewing from our kitchen window. As usual, it only took a few hours for a chickadee to drop in. They seem to know every location that has ever had a feeder, and they apparently send out scouts every day to see if we, or any other of the slackards, have finally gotten around to doing our duty. Within two days, a small flock of chickadees and tufted titmice were flouncing into the feeder, taking a seed, and flouncing back to the spruce tree. Within a week, the word of the restaurant re-opening had spread to our local woodpeckers, blue jays, finches, and juncos. The day before yesterday, January 26th, was the best day so far this year at the feeder, as two waves of birds stopped by in mid-morning. Several chickadees and a couple of titmice flew back and forth between the feeder and nearby trees, usually only spending the few seconds needed to grab a seed. A blue jay foraged under the feeder, and a woodpecker spent a few minutes pecking at the suet. After five or ten minutes, these birds departed and all was quiet again around the feeder. But after a few more minutes, three juncos flew down to pick at seeds under the feeder. I called to Nancy “There are three juncos …. no, four … no six …” Soon there were 13 of them spread out under the feeder picking seeds from the snow. Within another minute or two, they were joined on the ground by a female purple finch and two gold finches while a white breasted nuthatch was at the feeder.
Nuthatches are frequent visitors to our feeder:
March 30, 2022. A pair of elegant red-breasted nuthatches at the feeder. (above)
January 26, 2024, 32 degrees, foggy, 10-1030am. The first nuthatch of the year kept checking for trouble while getting seeds at the feeder. (right)
Count’em
For decades, the NH Audubon Society has been soliciting volunteers to assist in their annual bird counts. Using the data their volunteers have collected, they are able to determine whether different groups of birds are increasing, holding their own, or decreasing. Their results, which show that about half of all groups of birds are decreasing in New Hampshire, are available on line (About the Birds - NH Audubon).
NH Audubon’s Backyard Winter Bird Survey is scheduled for the weekend of February 10-11. Originated long ago as their annual cardinal/titmouse survey, NH Audubon has been seeking information on all birds since 1987. Anyone with a feeder or another place to watch birds in their backyard is encouraged to participate. What they are looking for is the maximum number of each species that you observe at one time. Audubon provides a form that lists a couple of dozen species that you might see at the feeder or in your backyard (Backyard Winter Bird Survey - NH Audubon).
All you need to do is look out the window, identify and count the birds, record the maximum number that you see, and then report the results on line.
Which one is it?
No one needs a guidebook to identify a chickadee, a cardinal, or a gold finch, but many will need a guidebook to identify less well-known visitors, such as red polls and pine siskins. A good photo will capture the male siskins yellow wing bars or the red poll male’s little red cap, yellow bill, pink chest, but the juveniles and females of both species are less easily distinguished. Since siskins and red polls both travel in small flocks, you often can use the males to identify the species and then count the number of birds in the flock.
February 26, 2022. A pair of pine siskins dines at the feeder, and we can see some yellow on the male’s wings.
February 5, 2023. The red poll’s red cap is barely visible in this photo. Why don’t they stay still in a better pose for a photo?
Nearly everyone needs a guidebook to distinguish between some very similar species. For example, I always require a good photo and a guidebook to figure out whether I’ve seen a male house finch or a male purple finch, both of which have pretty much the same wonderful colors.
Purple Finch, February 5, 2022. This finch has very extensive colors and less prominent chest stripes.
House Finch, April 6, 2022. This finch has less extensive colors and very prominent chest stripes.
I have even more trouble with downy and hairy woodpeckers. The guidebook tells me that the hairy has a longer bill, and, at 9.25 inches, is much longer that the 6.75 inch downy. Unfortunately, while it is easy to remember which bird is largest, how can we tell how big a bird is? A few times, a photo will include something that can be used as a ruler. For example, one of my favorite feeder photos (or should that be “phavorite pheeder photos?”) shows a chickadee photo-bombing a woodpecker. Using a ruler against the screen, I measured – and you can verify - that the ratio of their lengths is about “Nine to Five” (in capital letters to remind everyone of a movie well worth another viewing). Mr. Sibley tells me that chickadees are just over 5.25 inches long, so this woodpecker must have been more than 9 inches long – a hairy woodpecker.
January 8. 2021. A chickadee flew in just after a woodpecker landed on the feeder.
However, this photo-bombed portrait is the only one of my many dozens of woodpecker photos that allowed such a neat comparison. This morning, by happenstance, I came up with a simple solution to the problem of measuring the length of a woodpecker. When a woodpecker flew up to the suet, I took several photos, one of which showed the bird on the pole, looking straight at the bird house. Aha! I quickly got a ruler, went out to the feeder, and found that the side board of the feeder is 8.75 inches tall, slightly less than the 9.25" length of a hairy woodpecker. Since the woodpecker on the pole was only two thirds the height of the feeder, it clearly was a downy.
January 28, 2024. The photo on the left inspired me to use the feeder itself as a ruler that can be used to distinguish downy from the much larger hairy woodpeckers.
Some News is Good News
Cardinals and tufted titmice, the original focus of the Audubon survey are both moving their ranges northward. The first cardinal I saw as a kid, when I lived in Rhode Island, was when we visited my cousins in southern Connecticut in the early fifties. Thirty years later, the cardinals had moved at least as far north as Boston, and we regularly had cardinals in the yard. But it was only about ten years ago that we saw our first cardinal above the notch, and that one was flying behind the Dairy Bar in Franconia on a nice summer day. For the past few years, we not only have seen cardinals in the summer, but they have been regular visitors to our feeder.
February 28, 2023. A pair of cardinals seeking sunflower seeds below the feeder
In the last two weeks, I have at one time or another seen a murder of crows, thirteen juncos, six goldfinches, six blue jays, five chickadees, three tufted titmice, two purple finches and a single white-breasted nuthatch, downy woodpecker, and hairy woodpecker. I hope soon to see some grosbeaks, redpolls, cardinals, turkeys, grouse, and even some of the rarer visitors. How many to expect on the second weekend in February, who knows? In the spirit of that holiday weekend, I can only close by saying:
Happy Washington’s Bird Day!
