Monday, June 21, 2010

Another Installment of Weekend Birdservations!

  • A baby chickadee with a particular bald spot on his forehead finally learned how to eat from the suet grate.
  • Never before seen in our yard, a white-breasted nuthatch made an appearance. Since the visit I've heard their nasal "yaank yaank!" call from both ends of our front yard. I was able to get pretty close to one too as he waited in the tree for me to fill the bird feeder.
  • The hungry baby chipping sparrow I mentioned the other day ended up being a baby cowbird that a family of chipping sparrows fostered. I guessed this because the markings on the baby was not consistent with sparrows of any kind, was twice the size of its parents, and much hungrier than most sparrow babies. A week after I captured those photos I noticed them again and learned that those sparrows are actually raising two cowbird babies. 
  • Juvenile robins have been practicing their songs as the afternoons fade to evening. A little sputtery at times, but sounding more and more like their parents every day. 


2 comments:

  1. That is a cool picture of the raptor (?). We don't have a guess either. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ditto on that pic of the raptor-- how awesome! He flew so low and gracefully over the back yard on Father's Day, it gave me a little shiver for the sparrows.

    ReplyDelete