Birds in my backyard

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Back to Greg’s OLD Home Page from the last century!

Backyard Birds!

An amazing variety of Birds!

For years I have kept large woodpecker nest boxes available, and have moved them around to various locations, but I have never had success attracting a couple to settle down in one.  The downy woodpeckers do like to enter the bluebird houses and “modify” the wood on the inside of the door!

The Bird Feeder Page

I have five species of woodpeckers that come to the feeders; four are common visitors.  The northern flicker is the uncommon one.  Very rarely have I seen him eat sunflower seeds.  Usually they are spotted in the yard, eating insects or worms from the lawn.

The four other types of woodpeckers are very similar in what they like to eat.  They adore suet and the canned peanuts, and sometimes they will go for the black oil sunflower.  Their personalities differ greatly when it comes to their shyness of humans.  The hairy woodpecker is very skittish and the red-headed woodpecker is not much better.  The red-bellied woodpecker is more accepting of seeing me at the window.  The downy woodpecker could almost be called tame as they hang on to a nearby tree truck watching me service their feeders.  Although the hairy and the downy are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to shyness, they look very much alike.  They differ in size of the body and length of the bill, the hairy being much larger.

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Woodpeckers !!

Continued from the previous page.

Red-headed Woodpecker on the inverted suet feeder

Juvenile Red-headed Woodpecker.  Note the lack of coloration in the feathers.

A male Yellow-shafted Flicker interested in dining on some black oil sunflower seeds

A male Red-bellied Woodpecker with a little suet on his beak

A male Downy Woodpecker

hanging on to the inverted suet feeder

Tree Swallows

Parent feeding baby.  This is one of my favorite photos!  Note the housefly that has been dropped.

Tree swallows are absolutely wonderful birds that are vastly underappreciated by the general public.  Catching insects while in flight, they swoop around my yard for hours in groups of two or four.  Their green or blue coloration is almost iridescent, and their chattering is very pleasant.  They are very tolerant of people, and love to watch me mow the lawn.  They love to nest in bluebird houses, but mine are attracted to the plastic bluebird gourds that I hang 12 to 18 feet above the ground.  Since they are not territorial, I can have multiple families being raised in my yard at the same time.  They usually have two broods a year.  They are migratory, so are only around from late March through July.

Note the greenish tint to the coloration compared to the bluish glint in the above photo.

These two chicks opened their mouths loudly when they caught a glimpse of mom flying towards them with a beak full of insects.  More chicks are inside!

One of the best singers, the northern mockingbird is here year-round.  I commonly see them eating insects during the summer and crabapples in the fall and winter.  There have been times when one mockingbird has become enamored of sunflower seeds, suet, and peanuts.  I once had a brood raised in a nest built in a blue spruce tree, only five feet off the ground.

Mockingbird

Catbird

With its unique, cat-like call, the gray catbird is often heard but not seen.  When I do spot them, they are picking insects from the grass or pecking at fruit on the crabapple or magnolia trees.

Thrasher

The brown thrasher is an irregular visitor for me.  Mixed birdseed on the ground will keep one coming back day after day for many weeks, but then they will disappear for several months at a time.  Sometimes one will teach itself how to hover in place to dine at the suet feeder.

Unlike woodpeckers and blue jays, the Brown Thrasher will not hang upside down on the suet feeder, but hovers instead.