Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Mix 'n' Match

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At different points in other years we have had more birds in our yards than we're seeing at the moment but I don't think we've ever had such an interesting mix of species.

House Finches are some of our year-round residents, while House Sparrows have recently adopted our yards and will probably never leave.



On the other hand, Chipping Sparrows and American Goldfinch are only winter visitors.



However, as you can see below, we sometimes watch all four of these species sharing the same feeder.


Woodpeckers are represented by a pair of Downys, one or other of which seems always to be eating at our suet feeders.


Of course, the Downys have to move aside whenever our resident Northern Mockingbird decides to dine.


The Ruby-crowned Kinglet that spends every winter with us has been rather elusive lately but our winter Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumped Warblers are always around. 


The Dove family is always well represented by White-winged Doves - sometimes a handful and sometimes a score.


An American Robin is a less common and very welcome visitor.


As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we put up a couple of hummer feeders and almost immediately attracted a Rufous Hummingbird.


Well, on the weekend we put up three more feeders and now we seem to have at least two Rufous Hummingbirds.


Other resident birds visit regularly, too - Carolina Chickadees, Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals and Carolina Wrens. So, as I said at the beginning of this post, we certainly seem to have an interesting mix of birds in our yards.     
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