I love watching the antics of the birds in my backyard.  I attract them by offering feeders stocked with black oil sunflower seeds, suet, niger, peanuts, and millet.  I also provide a birdbath (heated throughout the winter season), and multiple nest boxes for housing.  When I got involved with digital SLR photography, the birds became a major subject for my 216mm lens.

 

Peruse my list of birds, and compare to your own experiences.  If you would like to share bird stories, use the Email address at the bottom of the page to get in touch with me.

Birds in my backyard

Songbirds

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Backyard Birds!

An amazing variety of Birds!

The Bird Feeder Page

House wrens are very common residents in the backyard nest boxes.  They build a nest composed mostly of twigs.   My boxes are designed with holes of different sizes as well as slot entranceways — the wrens like them all.  By late spring, there is always more than one house full of wren chicks in my backyard.  They are not seed eaters, so they never show up at the feeders.

House Wren

The chicks inside this box raised quite a ruckus when they wanted to be fed.  They could be heard from halfway

across the yard!

Carolina Wren

Carolina wrens are known for nesting in bird houses, but I have never had one in any of my nest boxes.  Instead, they are attracted to the peanut feeder on the office window as well as the inverted suet feeder that is usually frequented by woodpeckers.  They are wonderfully talented singers, and can emit quite a variety of sounds.  They come to visit throughout the year.

Nuthatch

White-breasted nuthatches enjoy the peanut feeder as well as suet and sunflower seeds.  They love to romp upside down on tree trunks, and have a very pleasant and unique voice.  They are seen year round and are quite accepting of having humans nearby while they visit the feeders.

Cardinal

American tree sparrows are identified by a single dark spot on their chest.  I see them very infrequently and only during the winter.  Slate-colored juncos are also only here at wintertime, but are much more common.  Both eat mixed seed, especially the millet, and prefer to eat loose seed off of the deck rather than to perch on a feeder.

Chipping sparrows are seen often during the spring, summer, and fall.  They eat mixed seed from a standard feeder.

All photos were taken with a Canon EOS 10D digital SLR camera.

White-crowned sparrows and white-throated sparrows tend to pal around together, although the white-crowned is definitely more common on my deck.  They are here throughout the winter and they eat mixed seed from a standard feeder.

American Tree Sparrow

Chipping Sparrows

White-crowned Sparrow

Song Sparrow

The song sparrows hang around the house all year long.  When not scrounging for millet off the ground in the backyard, they like to hop in and amongst the shrubs and small trees of the front yard.

The northern cardinal is a common daily sighting.  They love to sit at the feeder to eat black oil sunflower seeds.  Occasionally, one will nibble at the suet while hovering; they have been known to eat peanuts as well.  In the middle of winter, I have seen ten males at once taking turns at the feeders.  But in the spring, the males can be very territorial trying to chase others away.

Titmouse

Sparrows

The tufted titmouse is a wonderfully playful bird.  They come year round for sunflower seeds, white millet, and peanuts, and are often seen with chickadees.  They have a nice variety of calls.  Titmice do enjoy man made nest boxes, but I have never had the privilege of hosting them.

Chickadee

A carolina chickadee has a personality quite similar to a titmouse.  They can be remarkably tame birds, and will sometimes patiently sit in the tree branches while I add more seed to their feeders.  Most of the feeders serve them since they will eat at any except the niger seed.  They stay in the area all year and do make use of my bird houses in the spring.  Their nests are beautifully constructed, usually topped with green moss.  They like all my various box styles; they don’t seem to have a favorite.  I really like the chattery-type noise they make when they are watching me outside.

Finches

The yellow plumage of the american goldfinch is wonderful to watch as they hang upside down at the finch feeder eating niger seed (sometimes called thistle seed).  They look upon sunflower seed as a distant second in terms of taste.  In the late summer, they will hang on to flowers to pick mature seed from the head.

House finches, with their red highlights, provide contrast at the finch feeder.  But for them, the black oil sunflower seed is actually their favorite.

Both are rather accepting of human presence and stay all year long.