Spring Birds

 I'm pleased with the large numbers of birds that I'm seeing at the feeders this spring.  Some years things are very slow, but there are lots of visitors this year and it's lovely to see them all.

American goldfinches are in abundance this spring, higher than the past couple of years I'd say.  I've been routinely seeing 6 to 10 at a time visiting the feeder.  Here you can see several at the ports on the tube feeder and some on the tray platform.  There's also a female purple finch on the tray feeder. The white fuzzy blobs in the foreground are the anti-bird-collision dots on my windows.  

The goldfinches are even hanging about on the ground under the feeder!  That's not the usual spot for them, so it's a bit surprising to see so many on the ground.

I'm seeing a lot of the hairy woodpecker, who is enjoying the suet on offer.

There are a lot of purple finches around, accompanied by their more subtlely dressed mates.  This female purple finch looks a bit worried.

Maybe she's thinking that her mate is at the wrong feeder!  Yes, the purple finches keep coming to sit on the hummingbird feeder on the window.  Their beaks don't fit in the openings for the nectar, so I have no idea why they are visiting it.

I have far more white-throated sparrows than usual, almost always ground feeding.

Of course, the usual year-round birds are still here too, like the chickadees, even on wind-blown days.

The ever-present red-breasted nuthatches are always singing their fluted little songs.

I'm used to seeing the yellow-rumped warbler at the waterfowl park and even in the woods, but this is the first year they've been regularly visiting my suet feeder.  I'm delighted to have them!

The male and female downy woodpeckers are also frequent suet samplers.

Today, the "Merlin" app on my phone told me that I had an ovenbird in my woods, but try as I might, I could not find it to photograph.  However, I did have a moment of excitement with a new bird at the feeder today.  This is a female rose-breasted grosbeak.  I do occasionally have the evening grosbeaks, but have never had the rose-breasted before.  I hope she visits again and brings her mate!

I do love to watch the birds! (below, from left, American goldfinch, pine siskin, female purple finch, yellow-rumped warbler).

More birds returning as spring progresses

I've been enjoying watching the birds for the past couple of weeks as more species return after their long migrations.  This spring in particular, I've had a lot of purple finches at the feeder.  I have had them on occasion in the past, but never quite so many.  Last week I had a day with 8 of them at the feeders at once.  The male purple finches are such cheerfully coloured birds and I do enjoy watching them.  I took a lot of pictures - here are some of the better ones.

Keeping an eye out for danger.

The flock at the feeder. 

Hey lady, are you looking at me?

I've also had more pine siskins this year, including some during the winter.  I love the flash of yellow on their wings.  Here are a group of them at the feeder.

Here's a pine siskin enjoying a sip from the bird bath.

The robins have returned and I do hope that they will build a nest in the area.  I've had a pair build a nest under my eaves for the past 2 years, but I haven't seen any nest building activity yet.  Here's a watchful male robin who could probably see me taking pictures of him through my home office window.

I see you!

The white-throated sparrows are also showing up now - I love their song and their lovely little golden head spots.

I think he saw me too!

I didn't see as many pheasants as usual this past winter, but I did see this female earlier this week.  They are so good at camouflage.

Finally, I have a tailless song sparrow that has been visiting regularly.  No doubt it was nearly caught by a predator - perhaps a cat or a larger bird of prey.  Its lack of tail doesn't seem to hamper it though.  It flies with no trouble at all. 

I think I'll name him "Stubby!"

So lovely to have spring finally appear with a greater variety of birds in my yard!

Weekend Roundup: Q and R

I missed the weekend roundup last week, so I'm doing 2 letters this week - Q and R.  The prompts for Q from Tom the Backroads Traveller are: Starts with Q, Favourite, and Quiet, and the prompts for R are Starts with R, Red, and Favourite.

Starts with Q:
I'm feeling woefully inadequate for Q this time around.  Here is a picture of a pair of American Wigeons taken last month at the local waterfowl park.  American Wigeons are ducks.  Ducks say "quack" which begins with Q.  (see....really not very inspired).

Quiet:

Here is a quiet bunny.

Did you know that rabbits actually do make noises?  Most people think that rabbits are entirely quiet, but this is not true.  They make a range of noises, but many of them are soft noises that you wouldn't normally hear.  An annoyed rabbit makes a soft growl or grunt noise.  Sometimes Pippin does this when I pick him up and he doesn't want to be picked up.  Sometimes it's also accompanied by kicking feet.  Happy rabbits sometimes grind their teeth a bit (just gently - serious grinding is a sign of pain).  The grinding can make a soft noise almost like purring.  

In cases of extreme distress or pain, rabbits can actually scream.  This is a horrible noise and one that I never want to hear again.  I heard it once, and it was unforgettably bad.  

Starts with R:
This week, the helpful local carpenter (who built my little barn and chicken coop last year) was able to build and install six raised beds for me in my backyard.  I am really excited about this because it means that I will be able to grow some veggies of my own this year.  Raised beds are great because they tend to have fewer weeds and are easy to fill with ideal soil blends.  I will be filling these with some of my own compost as well as some compost from the farm where the carpenter lives.  As you can see, they are positioned near the chicken coop.  In the fall, when the beds are needing to be cleared out, I will make a portable raised bed frame so the chickens can forage in a bed for a day, without being taken by hawks.

The carpenter and his team carried the beds from their pickup trucks into my yard.  The beds are made with extremely thick rough-cut lumber.  They are lined with poly to help them last, but given the thickness of the wood, they will last a looooong time!

Then they positioned them all as I had requested.  This arrangement takes best advantage of the sun that I get in the yard (which is limited due to all the trees). I took this picture from the balcony off my bedroom to show the arrangement with the trees.  This is facing mostly east, but slightly south.  I put some cardboard in the bottoms of them to prevent weeds growing up, although they are 24 inches deep, so they probably won't have a problem with that.

They are constructed with a ledge around the top edge that I can easily sit or lean on for comfort while gardening. He even rounded the corners so I would not hurt my knees while walking around the beds.  It is great to have good help!  He is coming next week to help me fill them.

Red:
Last week I was able to photograph a pileated woodpecker.  It is the largest species of woodpecker we have in this area, and it has a bright red crest.  The male (seen below) also has a red "moustache" along the side of his face.

Favourites:

Here are a couple of favourites from the last couple of weeks.

A mourning dove on a wood stump in my yard having her fill of seeds.

A purple finch on a branch in the yard.  The favourite aspect of this picture is that the buds are swelling and getting ready to break.  I am so very ready for green!

Friday's Hunt, v 3.06

Friday is upon us once again, and our prompts from Eden Hills are, Starts with F, Week's Favourite, and Heart.

Starts with F
I love to feed the birds in winter!  I have several tube feeders, but not all birds like to feed at those. I had some evening grosbeaks come to visit and they had trouble standing on the small perches on my tube feeders.  I also have a suet feeder, pictured below, which is great for some species including the woodpeckers and nuthatches, and even the black-capped chickadees use it sometimes.

Marc made me a new feeder recently!  I asked him if he could make me a tray feeder for some of the other birds who don't like the tube feeders.  He cleverly made it from some scrap wood that was part of the packaging of our dishwasher that we installed when we moved in. The bottom is a scrap piece of window screen.

So far, it is mostly in use by the squirrels (no surprise there!)

I haven't seen the grosbeaks again (yet) but I am hopeful they will come back.  I hope it will also attract other species throughout the year.  It hangs from the post where the bird bath is installed.

Week's Favourite
Marc was having some one-on-one time with Pippin today, and Pippin climbed into his zippered sweatshirt.  I love this picture I took of Pippin peeking out and Marc looking down at him.  They make a cute pair!

Heart
We had a big snowfall last night, and we're expecting more in the coming few days.  My arm has been giving me trouble lately - I have ulnar nerve issues.  I'm also extremely busy with work contracts.  I am so grateful to Marc for snow-blowing our driveway, cleaning off the cars, and also cleaning off the sheep and goat hoop-hut.  My arm was not up to helping today.  For that, and many other reasons, I love him with all my HEART!

Melanistic Pheasants

The town where I live is known to have a population of wild melanistic ring-necked pheasants.  I didn't know about this until after I'd joined a local bird watching group on Facebook - a benefit of getting to know some local people who were knowledgeable about such things.  I saw my first pheasant soon after moving here this past summer, but it was a normal one, and I didn't really expect to see the melanistic ones.  Much to my surprise, they have become regular visitors!

Here is a standard coloured ring-necked pheasant (male).  You can see the dark copper tone on his chest leading to lighter coloured copper with black tips on the sides.  There is a light patch on the lower wing in almost a light grey tone.  He has a bright white collar with a dark green and blue iridescent head.

This is a partly melanistic male.  Some melanistic males (especially those bred in pheasant hatcheries) are almost completely black.  This is a wild melanistic male, and he has no sign of the usual copper colour on his chest and wings.  His chest has green and purple iridescence and he has a similar head feathering as the normal pheasant, but a bit darker.  He still maintains the white collar feathering.  You can see that his back feathers are a more olive-toned brown, compared to the red brown of the standard male pheasant.

Here is an even more striking melanistic mutant that recently visited.  As you can see, he is almost completely lacking the white collar - there are just a few hints of white around his neck.  The bands of colour patterns on his wing and back feathers are much more detailed than on the regularly coloured male pheasant.

Melanism is a genetic mutation that causes birds to have excess amounts of melanin in the feathers, causing darker pigments than usual.  Leucism is the opposite condition - a lack of pigment causing very pale feathers.  Melanistic pheasants are available from some hatcheries, but the ones visiting me are a locally-based group of wild pheasants.  We do not have any pheasant hatcheries in this area.

Because of inter-breeding between the regular coloured pheasants, there is a range of colour variation in the pheasants I have visiting my yard.  In the fall, I noticed a female pheasant with a troop of youngsters and I was intrigued by the fact that all her young appeared to be male (due to the red on their faces) but their feathering showed different colouring, more than I would have expected for adolescent birds at different stages of moulting.  Here is a photo of the adult female (in the rear) with two of the variant coloured young males.

As you can see, this young male is lighter coloured overall, with more light coloured edging on his feathers.  I might have thought he was a female, but the red on the face is a give-away.

This young male, by contrast, has darker lacing and darker overall feather tones.  I am sure these youngsters have become some of the adults now visiting.

They tend to feed under my bird feeder where the other birds drop seed.  I have been putting out some chicken feed pellets that I had on hand as well, to support them during this winter weather when there is a lot of snow cover and possibly limited feed available.  This has given me some good opportunities to photograph them.  My photographs are all taken through the windows of my home office, so the pictures aren't always as clear as I would like, but it has provided me a chance to get some good close-up shots of plumage variation.

Here you can see the significant difference between a regular male (right) and a melanistic male (left) feeding at the same time.  They almost look like two different species!

Note that the photographs I am sharing often have the tails cropped out.  This is because there is very little difference in the long tail feather colour, and my objective with this post is to demonstrate the difference in feather colours on the body and head of the birds.  These aren't "great" pheasant photographs - they are expressly chosen to demonstrate the plumage differences.

The difference is also evident in the female pheasants.  Here is a picture of a standard coloured female.

Here is a melanistic female.

Here they are together.

You can see significant differences with the edges of the wings in particular.  Here is the comparison of the standard female's back, showing her wing edges.

The melanistic female, by comparison, has far less delineation of the wing edges, because the pale edging is absent.

I'll share several more images of some of the different individuals who are currently visiting my yard. If you take the time to look closely, you will see significant variation in the patterning within the feathers, as well as in the colours.  I am sure that the continued breeding of these pheasants will result in many beautiful variants for birders in my area to enjoy over time.

This individual has much lighter and more significant patterning on many of his wing feathers, extending to some of the chest feathers.

This one retains some copper tones, but is still darker than normal.

The differences show very starkly when the variants are next to each other.  I notice that the "normal" coloured ones seem to show some aggression or dominance towards the variants.

These two appear to have the standard colouring at first glance, but notice how the one on the left has much more patterning on the 'shoulder' feathers and a darker copper colour on the chest.

This is one of my favourites.  His feathers are like jewels in the sun, but I haven't managed to get a good photograph of him in the sun yet.

Amazing!  Look at those feather patterns!  He's absolutely stunning!

A last shot of the darkest one to visit so far.

Sharing with Wild Bird Wednesday.  I haven't had many birds to share in recent months with the winter being upon us and the variation in birds being quite low at this time of year, but I felt these pheasants were worth showcasing.