Friday, May 03, 2013

Meanwhile, Back in Our Yards

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For the past week I've spent hardly any time in our yards. This is partly because I've been out looking for spring migrants and partly because the winter residents have now left our yards. My last sighting of Red-breasted Nuthatches was on April 24. Brown-headed Nuthatches are still visiting, which makes me think they may have become permanent residents.

When I have had time to look, I've seen only our normal residents, including the pair of Carolina Wrens that keep bringing their young to check out our feeders. American Robins, Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals and Carolina Chickadees have all been regular visitors also.










As always, some of the most frequent visitors have been White-winged Doves. This one seemed to be testing the temperature of the water in our birdbath with its tail.


The temperature must have been just right because the bird proceeded to take a leisurely bath.








Every so often all of our birds disappear, when a Cooper's Hawk flies through our yards. It's presumably the same hawk that has been hanging out on our block for most of the winter.



This Weekend
As another cold front is passing through, we've decided to spent the weekend at High Island. While the odds are very low of any fallout lasting to Saturday, we're hoping that we might see a good number of migrants. If migrants don't appear, we should still have fun watching the nesting birds in the Smith Oaks rookery and making another visit to Anahuac NWR.
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