Friday, December 03, 2010

Bits and Bobs

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Our yards at home have been pretty busy. All of our normal winter residents have arrived now but only in small numbers. The ones who have arrived aren't yet visiting the feeders as often as I hope they will later, when other food becomes harder to find. We've only seen our male Ruby-crowned Kinglet a couple of times and even our one Yellow-bellied Sapsucker only pops in occasionally.


It's been fairly quiet on the college campus, too. Yellow-rumped Warblers are the most common birds visible at present - except for our innumerable N Mockingbirds, of course. I still hear wrens everywhere but haven't seen any recently. A Brown Thrasher has been around for some weeks and yesterday he was hanging out with Cardinals. I've been pleased to hear Carolina Chickadees, because I hadn't seen or heard any on the campus for months.

At lunchtime I was surprised to see two Ring-billed Gulls hanging out in one of the parking lots. We usually only see gulls here when there are storms on the coast, so I'm not sure what caused these two birds to pay us a visit.


P.S. 
Did some quick birding around the campus nature trail this morning and turned up some new (this season) birds: Hermit Thrush, White-throated Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow and Savannah Sparrows. 

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3 comments:

Dag Norman said...

Hello, a lot of beautiful birds, I´m trying to learn a little bit before Im going over the ocean, your blog is a good "teacher", like Ruby-crowned Kinglet, who remind me about our own Common Goldcrest, and the colourful Northern Cardinal, we have nothing like that. This summer there was one Ring-billed Gull who visiting the south-west part of Norway, where I´m living, it´s always funnny and interestning when North American species shows up. http://naturogkunst.blogspot.com/2010/10/ringnebbmake-larus-delawarensis.html

dns

Jeff said...

Hi, Dag. I'm glad you find the blog useful.
When are you coming to the USA? Which part are you going to visit?

Dag Norman said...

Hallo again, I´m not sure when we are going to USA, in a couple of years I think, it depends on when we can let the kids be alone, (the youngest are 14 years), but we will visit the coustline from Mexico (McAllen) to Penscola/Florida, including Smokey Mountain, Land Between the Lakes, but it depends on how much time we will have available, if there is some special areas in this "trip-route" who are very "bird-photo-good", it will be very nice to know about it, :)!

dns