Lots of Residents!

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While much of our attention over the past weeks has been focused on our winter visitors, we certainly haven't ignored our year-round residents. The colder weather this month has brought them to our feeders several times a day every day in January.

Among our favorites are a group of House Finches. One of the females has a growth on the top of her bill but seems otherwise to be healthy.

This male certainly seems to be in good condition.

As usual, our Carolina Wrens divide their time between eating at our feeders and rummaging through our plant containers.

This female Northern Cardinal has been visiting our backyard very frequently, sometimes alone and sometimes with her mate.

I've never seen the female make use of our birdbath but her mate regularly comes down to bathe in it.

While House Sparrows have been a little less of a nuisance lately, they still tend to show up en masse every now and then, scaring away some of our other birds and emptying our seed feeders.

So far this year White-winged Doves have been visiting only in ones and twos, as opposed to descending in their usual hordes. 

A Red-bellied Woodpecker occasionally turns up in our trees and at our feeders but rarely stays long. Our Downy Woodpeckers (below) visit much more often and hang around longer.

Blue Jays disappeared from our yards for several months last year. Luckily, they reappeared in the fall and several now pop in frequently to take peanuts and to drink from the birdbath.

Northern Mockingbirds used to be daily visitors to our yards. Then, like the Blue Jays, they vanished for months.So we are very pleased that two Mockingbirds are now regularly flying in to eat from our suet feeders. 

Apart from the birds above, our most reliable visitors are Carolina Chickadees. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to get any photos of these delightful birds so far this year.Nor have I managed to get a recent picture of the Cooper's Hawk that lives on our block and sometimes flies down to perch on our fences.
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