Due to an avian virus that is killing off pine siskens, we’ve been encouraged to hold off on filling our bird feeders for the last month or so here in Central TX. The siskens have been ranging further south this year, due to colder and dryer conditions in their normal wintertime habitat. While it’s not unusual to see pine siskens around here, it’s unusual to see so many. Same goes for robins and yellow-rumped warblers. They were everywhere this winter, crowding out the usual suspects at the feeders.

The pine siskens are returning to their boreal summertime habitat in Canada, and now I’m able to fill my feeders. I’ve spent countless hours staring at my feeders during the pandemic. Not being able to watch them feed for a month was tough.

Three painted buntings came to the feeder this morning, two males and a female. I was glad to see them.

Anyone else watching birds and noticing big changes in visitation? It’s been a strange year. I wonder how much of it has to do with climate change, or how much of it had to do with changes in human behavioral patterns?

paging my wife to this thread

There was an excellent twitter account, recently banned, for United Arabic Falconry and Falcon-derived financial instruments. It's a shame we can't have nice things on twitter. I've noticed a couple other people reviving the handle concept but so far nobody comes close.

That's all I got for birds.

We moved out to the sticks in November and have installed some feeders and really love the variety. Nothing super fancy / out of the ordinal, but just seeing those bright red cardinals every day is nice. Probably my favorite so far is the pileated woodpecker. I had chainsawed a tree that was already down for campfire / bonfire wood, then realized it came down due to termites, so left it out in the yard (away from the woods, away from the house) and the woodpecker's been going nuts.

I always call juvenile cardinals “tittybabies” because they beg for their parents to feed them even after they’ve left the nest. They have an obnoxious high pitched chirp that begs and begs until one of the parents, usually the dad, takes food from the feeder and passes it to the youngster, even though it’s perfectly capable of feeding itself.

This year’s crop of tittybabies are perched outside my window, driving me nuts with that pleading squeaky chirp. Fucking tittybabies, man.

jason from volo wrote: Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:17 pm
So my cousin has apparently moved into a neighborhood with a bald eagle as a resident.

About a year ago, I also saw one fly overhead in the parking lot of the local supermarket, headed north towards the Chain o' Lakes.

They have made an amazing comeback.

We've got suburban and even urban bald eagles here in Denver taking up residence in parks and around reservoirs. Hawks and falcons too although I'm not schooled enough to name the species.

I don’t really know a thing about birds, but my parents live on Lake Erie here in northeast Ohio and they get dozens of purple martins at their house when they migrate up north for breeding season. They put up three or four giant birdhouses for them. It’s very impressive to just sit outside and watch them hunt insects as they just hawk them out of the air. There’s also a bald eagle nest nearby and we see them snatch fish out of the lake from time to time.

We put up hummingbird feeders at our house, and get the occasional hawk or falcon in the trees in our back yard. Every now and then in the fall I’ll see wild turkeys roaming around.

Birds everywhere here at Bondi Beach. Our favourites are the myna bird couple who nest in the tree out the back. The follow us across the road every day when we sit on the grass to have lunch. Not to beg for food, but just to hang out. Sometimes they come inside and hope through the apartment. They are pretty cool

last year I was on layoff from end of April to early July and saw stuff at our feeders (in NW Indiana) that I'd never seen or only seen rarely. Lots of rose crested grosbeaks, orioles, tanagers of various types. We had 2 bluebird families and a family of house finches and a family of hair woodpeckers too. Pileated woodpeckers are common in my woods and once in a while we see turkeys and woodcocks. This year it's been totally different, and there has been a "mystery" ailment that has afflicted a number of birds in the midwest that makes them act kind of drunk, or unresponsive just prior to dying. We took all of our feeders down in May except for the hummingbird feeders because my wife's native plant group was promoting congregation at feeders as one of the disease vectors for the affected birds.

We only really see chickadees and bluebirds in the winter months, and normally don't see sandhill cranes as late into the summer as we have in the past 2 or 3 years.

Common visitors to my feeders include: Cardinals, Blue Jays, fucking Grackles, the occasional Oriole, Chickadees, Yellow and Purple Finches, Downy Woodpeckers, Sapsuckers, Hummingbirds (at least one Ruby Throat), a pair of Mourning Doves, and an evasive monster Pileated (not at the feeder, but out in the slough behind the house carving the shit out of the Popple trees).