Tufted Titmouse
This Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) is excited to see some full feeders for fall foraging. What is the strangest place that you have seen one cache a seed at your home?
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This cute Tufted Titmouse may be building a home soon, if it is not already, depending on where you live. Have you ever put out dog fur for them to use as nesting material? Titmice, and other small songbirds that use nestboxes and cavities like the Black-capped Chickadee, will take fur that you put out in say, an empty suet cage, and use it to line their nest. Some have even been known to try to pull the fur right off a dog or another animal! You may want to be sure, of course, that the fur is free of any parasites or chemicals and is otherwise clean. They will readily pull out very large...
Read MoreSnowy Away
This is about the best photo of a Snowy Owl that I could get in the last couple of weeks. They have been elusive, to say the least, even when nearby. Most of that time I have encountered the far more wary individual – one of two hanging out for the winter in the Stratford Point area – and it has been certainly as jumpy as ever lately. On Tuesday it was chased off by crows before anyone noticed it hunkered down in the grasslands. The shot here is the result of it flying off last week before I could even raise my camera between the door and body of my Jeep from hundreds of feet...
Read MoreDowny Woodpecker
As I speculated a few days ago, this is now the time when you will be finding more birds at your feeders – like this Downy Woodpecker. It goes beyond the ground being frozen, ice covering some food sources, or snow blanketing everything. While it is harder to literally feed, it is also much colder now, and the birds need many more calories in order to survive. A lot of people were inquiring about why their feeders were so quiet towards the end of 2015, and I think it was certainly related to the fact that we had some days with temperatures in the 60s and 70s across the region and...
Read MoreSnowy Owl
Welcome to winter! It took a while, but we are really feeling it now, with more to come this January as we look at long-range weather models. Here are a few more upland photos of the Snowy Owl that I enjoyed last Friday on a much warmer day without any snow. As we get deeper into the season we will inevitably see a few more winter birds…additional Rough-legged Hawks? Perhaps finally some of those record-setting Common Redpolls that were pouring south in Canada during autumn? It seems to be a down season for irruptive passerines, but I have to think we will at least have more backyard...
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