Hello again!
It certainly has been a long winter. We still have over 3 feet of snow in the backyard with some banks nearly 10 feet tall around town. It’s JUST starting to melt some the past few days but winter & spring will be battling it out for at least another month yet.
I haven’t done a whole lot of photography this winter, mainly because it’s been a good old fashioned winter, meaning lots of near -40C & tons of snow! On the plus side, my feeders were much busier this winter than the past 2 winters combined. Not huge numbers of birds but steady daily activity with a couple of interesting visitors thrown in.
This beautiful Fox Sparrow visited my yard in November 2021 for a week or two. I don’t get to see Foxies every year so it’s always a huge treat when one shows up during spring or fall migration.
Fox Sparrow (please ignore the stick!)
A female Brown Headed Cowbird also visited the backyard in November. She didn’t stay around for more than a couple of days. Not a bird I see often in my yard or at my feeders.
Female Brown Headed Cowbird
We have Pileated Woodpeckers in this area all year round and they nest in various areas near me. This lovely female graced my backyard for all of about 3 minutes in December!
Female Pileated Woodpecker
As I said, it was a very cold winter up here. This is what Evening & Pine Grosbeaks look like at near -40C. Birds are SO much tougher than we give them credit for!
Female Evening Grosbeaks in January.
Male (red) and female Pine Grosbeaks in bitter cold of January
This Raven came around once I put out a suet cake. He/she would knock it off the platform feeder onto the patio stones below, then peck away at it until it had its fill. I would go out & put the cake back up onto the platform & a while later, the Raven would repeat the process. This went on until the suet cake was finally small enough for the Raven to carry it away! Awesome birds!
Handsome Raven – the biggest bird that (sometimes) visits my feeders
We were lucky enough last fall & early winter to have not just one but *3* Ruffed Grouse coming around. We believe one was the resident adult female & 2 were siblings from last summer. As winter went on, we regularly only saw one Grouse coming at a time but suspected there were 2 in the area. They LOVED the Mountain Ash berries last fall!
Ruffed Grouse – the Rockstar of the Webcam!
Cedar Waxwings (and Pine Grosbeaks among others) also loved the Mountain Ash berries. We had a really good crop last fall but wow, they sure didn’t last long. We have also had Bohemian Waxwings around most of this winter so here are a couple of photos to show the differences. Their calls & whistles are slightly different too.
Cedar Waxwings – mostly brown with yellow underbellies
Bohemian Waxwings – Rusty red on forehead & cheeks and rump … no yellow on underbelly
Very fluffy Bohemian Waxwings eating leftover crabapples in my neighbour’s tree.
After the past 2 winters of having virtually NO Redpolls or Pine Grosbeaks, I have ….. some ……. Redpolls this winter. 5 years ago, I would normally have anywhere from 100 to 200 Redpolls at my feeders all day long, all winter long. This winter, I’ve had nearly 50 at most, usually 25 to 30 at any given time.
Female Common Redpoll
I’ve had a regular flock of Black Capped Chickadees coming around all winter along with a pair of Red Breasted Nuthatches. There are about 6 Chickadees in total and they are such a joy to see. It absolutely amazes me how these little ones surivive in weeks of -35C. They are incredible.
Black Capped Chickadee
It seems like every winter, I get at least one of what I call a Special Visitor to my feeders. If you’ll recall, last winter was the Western Meadowlark. This winter? It was a Brown Creeper that visited my peanut butter/suet log for about a month! To my knowledge, this is the first Brown Creeper I’ve had in the yard altho’ I can be fairly certain one HAS been here before and I just haven’t seen it. After all: they’re not much bigger than my pinkie finger! This little one actually came to feed every day, multiple times per day for about a month when it was bitterly cold late January into February.
Teeny-tiny Brown Creeper nibbling at suet/peanut butter mix.
And here’s something a little different. I thought I would show you a counted Cross-Stitch picture that I finished stitching in January. 🙂
I’m ending this post with a warning for people who feed birds. There is a threat of Avian Influenza coming through with migrant birds this spring. It has been confirmed in the Atlantic & Mississippi flyways with cases on the east coast of Canada. Recommendations are for people to take their feeders down for at least the migration season to help stop possibly infected birds from congregating in large flocks. The illness is highly contagious & deadly. You can Google ‘avian influenza’ to find more information. My feeders will be coming down at the end of this month, sooner if I see migrants showing up. The webcam will be shut down for the season within days of my feeders coming down. Please consider taking the same precautions to help stop the spread.
Thanks so much for reading! 🙂