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Nine Squirrels and More Wind

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.

Where are the Animals?

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.

A Cooper’s Hawk Snags a Junco

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