While not an official "birder" I do pay attention to their comings and goings and while my front yard looks like most of my neighbors my back yard is closer to the deep woods. I keep 3 feeders going in the back and go through 44 lbs of birdseed a week in the spring. I have identified close to 50 different species in my yard over the year…
While not an official "birder" I do pay attention to their comings and goings and while my front yard looks like most of my neighbors my back yard is closer to the deep woods. I keep 3 feeders going in the back and go through 44 lbs of birdseed a week in the spring. I have identified close to 50 different species in my yard over the years. I have some recommendations that might make watching these wonderful creatures more enjoyable. Do yourself a favor and get iBird Pro, it lists close to 1000 different birds in NA, with drawings, photos, range, diets, habits, calls, breeding preferences for each. I play their calls in my iPhone sometimes playing a Coopers Hawk to run off the doves that tend to dominate the feeders, at the first sound of the hawk they are gone, they eat them you know. Another good ap is Merlin Bird ID, it's made by Cornell Lab. You can tell it to start recording and over the course of 5 - 10 minutes it will identify the sounds of every bird the mic picks up, it's fascinating to see who's visiting, they also have a link to migrations, many species migrate at night and they do it in mass, thousands of them as if on signal, so it will say there are 25,000 red wing blackbirds at 10,000 ft over Atlanta on a given night. I would guess that the pilots and airlines are aware of them since they will show up on radar. 2 or 3 days after they leave here they are in New England. I never tire of watching them and their displays of the pecking order which they all are very much aware of especially around the feeders, woodpeckers, even the smallest ones, are at the top of the pecking order from what I have witnessed. That was a great post Tom, I knew nothing about that bird, thank you.
While not an official "birder" I do pay attention to their comings and goings and while my front yard looks like most of my neighbors my back yard is closer to the deep woods. I keep 3 feeders going in the back and go through 44 lbs of birdseed a week in the spring. I have identified close to 50 different species in my yard over the years. I have some recommendations that might make watching these wonderful creatures more enjoyable. Do yourself a favor and get iBird Pro, it lists close to 1000 different birds in NA, with drawings, photos, range, diets, habits, calls, breeding preferences for each. I play their calls in my iPhone sometimes playing a Coopers Hawk to run off the doves that tend to dominate the feeders, at the first sound of the hawk they are gone, they eat them you know. Another good ap is Merlin Bird ID, it's made by Cornell Lab. You can tell it to start recording and over the course of 5 - 10 minutes it will identify the sounds of every bird the mic picks up, it's fascinating to see who's visiting, they also have a link to migrations, many species migrate at night and they do it in mass, thousands of them as if on signal, so it will say there are 25,000 red wing blackbirds at 10,000 ft over Atlanta on a given night. I would guess that the pilots and airlines are aware of them since they will show up on radar. 2 or 3 days after they leave here they are in New England. I never tire of watching them and their displays of the pecking order which they all are very much aware of especially around the feeders, woodpeckers, even the smallest ones, are at the top of the pecking order from what I have witnessed. That was a great post Tom, I knew nothing about that bird, thank you.
Interesting stuff, Dick.
I looooove my Merlin Bird ID!