Greensboro Birds

Josh brought home more trees yesterday. His new job in the plant business is doing wonders for our yard. On Tuesday, he toted home a yoshino cherry in full bloom and this eastern redbud. We planted the redbud in the front-yard space formerly occupied by my feeder, with the goal of hanging a feeder in [...]

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I like the swirly look of the male goldfinches when they’re in mid-molt, don’t you?

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Yesterday brought more than just the first day of spring. It also brought a minor invasion of purple finches. I spent the bulk of the sunlight hours assembling a gigantic Mantis ComposTwin compost tumbler, which Josh’s parents generously gave us (they’re excellent boosters of our gardening efforts). At one point, as I was researching a [...]

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Pine warblers do love the suet and will defend it mightily against interlopers. The warbler returned yesterday afternoon to both the front and backyard suet, alternating between the two every few minutes. Because the American goldfinches are becoming so yellow again, from a distance (and because I lost my glasses for real this time) I [...]

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This weekend is the annual Great Backyard Bird Count. Birders around the United States are busy listing the birds they see in their neighborhoods. Not only the birds at their feeders, but also any birds that fly overhead (vultures and seagulls count!) and birds that can be spotted on the street or on the neighbors’ [...]

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Red maples bloom early in the season. Here in the Piedmont, they bloom right about the time our American goldfinch males start molting into their brighter breeding plumage. The blooms weren’t out yesterday, but they sure are today, and the ones outside my office are filled with bloom-snacking finches. Goldfinches LOVE maple blossoms!

I sat on [...]

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More “wintry mix” on the way today. The dark-eyed juncos are really discovering the wonders of the feeder. It’s a weird thing to see these ground-feeders figuring out the feeder world. Juncos don’t really get the etiquette up there, so they either give way to other birds too readily, or they get into combat when [...]

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We had a reasonably hard frost this morning, and the birds were out in force. The crow trio showed up like clockwork to pick at the corncobs on the hill. I don’t think they’re even that into the corn per se; I think they just really enjoy the process of picking off the kernels.
I nearly [...]

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