Sunday, January 5, 2025

The sun emerged early this morning for less than an hour before disappearing behind a solid gray sky. Individual snow flakes fall silently, never quite reaching the ground. The cold and wind and grayness feel like winter, but the lack of any snow so far is unsettling.

As I was typing this while sitting at our dining table, I heard a loud thunk. That usually means a bird has hit our window. When I looked out to check, a female Cooper’s Hawk was perched below me on a small shrub. She was looking at the house, hopped over, then back out a few few with a dead junco in her talons. She flew off to a large pine tree in the neighbor’s woods to pluck her prey. Juncos are handsome little puffballs, but they are also known as “junco popcorn.”

We were just noting that we have not seen or heard many raptors — hawks or owls — in our neighborhood recently. So, it was nice to see one zero in on our yard for a meal. Later in the morning a gang of 8 blue jays flew in to the crabapple and took turns feeding on the ground. They didn’t stay long. Mid-afternoon, a male common grackle spent a bit of time in the tree and snagged a few sunflower seeds.

23. Cooper’s hawk
24. American crow
25. Common grackle

Saturday, January 4, 2025

In the current issue of Living Bird, author Ed Yong describes his love of birds and compares birding and social media consumption as two different ways to spend your time. In the past, he says, “I spent a lot of my time and my life on social media, caring about what people who I don’t actually care about are saying and thinking…” Now he spends that energy on studying birds, such as trying to discern between a western or a semipalmated sandpiper probing the sand. He says, “And one of those things is a total waste of my time, and it’s desperately uncool. And it is not the sandpiper thing.”

The only social media that I consumed was Twitter, until that went south, then I switched to Blue Sky. There are a few people that I like to follow there, but the rest seem to have devolved into the usual shouting and quick takes. I’m reading more books and essays by writers that I follow, and of course, studying our yard birds daily.

Even before first light, the early birds have arrived at the feeders: cardinals and juncos. The rest move in as the morning progresses. Today, the regulars were joined by a single tree sparrow. A female yellow-bellied sapsucker stopped at the crabapple (which is ringed with sapsucker holes). Her head feathers looked a bit ragged, perhaps molting, but her features were clear: red cap, white throat, faint yellow belly. Sapsuckers do indeed consume more than sap, as she was pecking and eating pieces of a shriveled crabapple.

21. Tree sparrow
22. Yellow-bellied sapsucker

My quarterly issue (Winter 2025) of Cornell Lab’s Living Bird arrived today. My husband and I each view every page to see if we can identify the birds shown in photograph or drawing. The Cornell Lab offers many amazing resources to members and the public. The magazine for members is just splendid.

I am not able to take Living Bird worthy photographs of birds in our yard (the iPhone is not up to the task), but we can watch them from our windows with the naked eye or assisted by binoculars. These are our birds. They are not always eye-catching, but they have behaviors, and feather patterns, and features that engage and entertain.

Today, two white-throated sparrows returned to feed among our perennials and shrubs outside our front windows. We hadn’t seen them for a few days.  Twenty species for the year.

After dark, around 5:30, as we were preparing dinner, we glanced at the night sky. There, to the southwest, the crescent moon and Venus shown brightly. We appreciate these natural gifts offered day and night.

20. White-throated sparrow