It’s the last official day of Winter! I’m so excited! Unfortunately, it also means that it’s treacherous around my parts of my yard right now, with a thick layer of ice hiding under thin layers of snow, after a day of heavy rain last week. Skates, anyone??
Ice down the side of my garage to the back gate.
We are still completely buried in snow here. The melt has barely begun. The snow is finally starting to compact some so the banks have gone down a foot or so in the past week. Long ways to go yet before we see grass again! Looking at these shots from the webcam, you can see how much snow we still have. The fence back there is 6 feet tall.
Webacm snap: female Hairy Woodpecker on the peanut butter log & female Downy Woodpecker on the platform feeder. Very rare to catch them together!
Webcam snap: Ruffed Grouse and male Pine Grosbeak
Webcam snap: Common Redpolls and Evening Grosbeaks
Webcam snap: Redpoll numbers have continued to increase. They now number 100+ daily with at least 3 Hoary Redpolls thrown in for good measure. 🙂
Webcam snap: female Hairy Woodpecker on the peanut butter log with Common Redpolls & a pair of Evening Grosbeaks.
The resident pair of Crows have returned to my yard this week. Crows used to migrate every winter but they don’t anymore. This winter is the first they’ve migrated in at least 5 years. They obviously knew something about the season that we didn’t: we were hitting wind chills of nearly -60 at one point …. good time for them to be gone! They have a major liking for the peanuts I put out and clean them off the platform feeder in a matter of minutes.
Resident pair of Crows. They will nest in the small woods behind my back fence. Last year, they regularly brought 3 youngsters to my yard. Hoping for a repeat performance. 🙂
One of my lovely Crows in my Crab Apple tree during last week’s rain storm.
Redpoll numbers have finally approached normal in the past couple of months. They were quite late arriving this year, I think because the first half of winter was so calm and easy. Once late January came around with the Polar Vortex & heavy amounts of snow, they really discovered the nyjer feeders. I am now about the scrape the bottom of my 50 lb bag of nyjer seed!
Common Redpolls on one of the nyjer feeders.
Birds on a wire … Common Redpolls in this case!
2 of at least 3 Hoary Redpolls visiting my yard this year. Suspect this photo shows a Hoary ‘Hornemanni’ subspecies (far left) & a possible Hoary ‘exilipes’ subspecies (far right). I’m open to other opinions.
Super cute fluffball! Male Hoary Redpoll. I suspect this one is a ‘hornemanni’ subspecies, due to its larger size (compared to Commons) and amount of paleness.
Stunning male Common Redpoll with seed.
And now, a few photos of other visitors to the yard lately.
Pine Grosbeak numbers have already started to drop in my yard. They weren’t very high this winter to begin with. I had a high count of about 25 at one point but now, I’m lucky to see 3 or 4 in a day. Seems early for that to be happening.
Male Pine Grosbeak.
Evening Grosbeak numbers have been really hit or miss this winter. Some days I’ll have 15 or so, other days I won’t see them at all. How I miss the days when I would have 50 or 60 or more all winter long!
Female Evening Grosbeaks getting a drink from the ‘heated’ birdbath.
Handsome male Evening Grosbeak. I noticed today that some of the Evenings are JUST starting to show a hint of the green colour coming into their beaks as nesting season approaches.
Ruffed Grouse visits have been really sporadic this winter. I’m pretty sure there have been at least 2 of them coming around, judging from slight differences in size & colouration, but I haven’t seen them together at all to be certain.
Ruffed Grouse on the platform feeder. Hard to get a half decent photo with a pure white (snowy!) background!
Canada Jays have not been around in a couple of weeks so I think we can safely say they are nesting now. They are the earliest nesting birds in the region. Blue Jay numbers have dropped off some too since the Crows arrived. I did have at least 4 Blue Jays in the yard yesterday though.
Blue Jay in a snowstorm.
Woodpeckers have returned to my yard after being absent most of the winter. I now have a pair of Downies & a pair of Hairies visiting almost daily, taking advantage of the peanut butter log. Really hoping to see babies this year.
Female Downy WP in my Crab Apple tree. Cutie!
And that’s it for this month. Hopefully but the time I post again, a few more migrants will have returned so I have something else to talk about. 😉 In the meantime …..
HAPPY SPRING!
This is a great post! Thank you so much for bringing birds to this city-dwelling
bird-interested person who mostly sees sparrows!
love your pictures, Awesome as always Tammie!
Lovely pictures. I enjoy watching your feeders and visit every day.
Happy spring! It’s interesting the birds that stay or migrate. I had a dozen robins overwinter one year.
The grosbeaks were here in December, and took off for parts unknown.
I hear you about the ice. We’ve had the same thing.