Saturday, January 11, 2025

It snowed today! Only an inch or two, but it is the first snow of the year. By early morning birds and squirrels were busy at the feeders and in the front yard. A red squirrel appeared today, foraging among the perennials, while as many as 9 gray squirrels dominated the area under the feeders. Some of the grays continued to chase each other, more play than aggression.

Around 11:15 AM we heard one then another junco hit our windows. Must be a hawk. Sure enough, a female sharp-shinned hawk snagged a male purple finch. She landed on the ground and spent over an hour plucking feathers and eating the songbird, resting a couple times to digest her food. Snow continued to fall and vehicles passed on the road, but nothing disturbed her. We identified her as a sharpie, from her rounded head, gray head and nape, and reddish-orange feathers on her cheeks. The tail also looked square and slightly notched. She was about the size of a mourning dove–larger than a male sharp-shinned would be.

The rest of the songbirds and squirrels fled while she was eating the finch. A downy woodpecker was frozen, perched on the nearby dogwood tree. After about 45 minutes a few birds–chickadees and downies–ventured back to the feeders, even though the sharpie was within a few feet. After an hour, the sharp-shinned flew up into the crabapple tree, wiped her bill, preened a few feathers, then flew off after 15 minutes.

26. Sharp-shinned hawk

Thursday, January 9, 2025

The gray squirrels usually start arriving in the front yard after sunrise. This morning the sky was gray and still windy, so the arrival today might have been when they decided to venture out of their cozy tree nests. By 7:30 AM there were 9 gray squirrels. About half stayed under the feeders peacefully eating sunflower seeds. The others, usually in twos, sometimes threes, chased each other across the yard, up and down trees, and here and there.

Around 9:00, I counted 6 female and 3 male purple finches and around noon, 10 female and 10 male house finches. And maybe a dozen goldfinches. It’s a finch year.

Around mid-morning a female yellow-bellied sapsucker landed in the crabapple and spent some time eating one and then another shriveled crabapple. Her cardinal red head feathers looked bright and fresh, while her wing weathers look to still be molting. Her breast and belly were a soft yellow.

A lone tree sparrow joined the juncos for a time. And 6 bluebirds visited now and then throughout the day. Around 3:15 a (or the same one) Cooper’s hawk zoomed in, flushed a junco from our perennial bed, gave aerial chase around the yard and into the bayberry bush where it captured the little fella. They got to eat too.

Monday, January 6, 2025

When we walk in our nearby conservation areas, we see and hear very few birds. And hardly any sign or sightings of mammals. In contrast, the the sunflower seed and suet feeders, shriveled crabapples in the tree, perennials and shrubs in our front yard are attracting a lot of birds. Mammals are still lean in diversity, but we’ve beed getting 5-7 gray squirrels and we see one to two cottontails before dawn.

This morning we had 7 downy woodpeckers waiting their turn at the suet feeders. I don’t recall seeing that many at once before. The number and diversity of birds in our yard seems higher than I recall in previous winters. Some stay for long periods, but all come and go at some point. I wonder where they go since we see so few when we wander the woods. Do the groups of each species  — the 7 downy woodpeckers, the 8 blue jays, the 2 dozen juncos — cozy up together at night, in a cavity, or boughs of a pine, or thick shrub?

Some of the gray squirrels are chasing each other. This is the breeding season, Males are noting females in estrus and the females are deciding if their pursuers are fit to be fathers.