Greensboro Birds

At last! It’s the first day of spring. Is the first day of any other season looked forward to with the kind of desperate anticipation and crazy glee as spring? I doubt it. Especially for those of us who grew up in the path of the arctic jet stream, spring is when you can finally [...]

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Song Sparrows are bursting into tune. So are the towhees, cardinals, bluebirds, red-shouldered hawks, and the wrens. Oy, the wrens! Sometimes the wrens are so loud and constant with their singing that I have a hard time getting anything done. When I walk our woodland path the wrens follow me, signing and chattering the entire [...]

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This Song Sparrow, currently singing with its beak full, does a spot-on version of the first line of the 1973 Seals & Crofts hit “Diamond Girl.” You know: “Diamond girl [mmm-hmmm], you sure do shine [mmm-hmmm].” Seriously, he’s been singing this line for about a month, and the song is stuck in my head from [...]

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It’s tough to put into words the feeling a birder gets from a great bird sighting. I think singing Song Sparrows represent that feeling best: chest puffed up, head back, beak wide open, and music trilling above the trees.
Today I ran into our friend Dennis, who was totally stoked from spotting a Red-headed Woodpecker near [...]

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This is the scene every few minutes outside our window: Song Sparrows feeding their Brown-headed Cowbird fledgling. Birders know that the cowbird is a parasitic breeder, meaning the females lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, usually removing one of the host bird’s eggs in the process. The cowbird egg hatches a day [...]

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Returning from my afternoon bird walk, I encountered this little scene playing out at my feeder. The Northern Mockingbird has decided that my feeder is his feeder—and only his. Whenever he lands on the railing he does that wings-out crouch thing to tell everyone else, “Mine! Back off!” Funny thing, though, these Greensboro birds see [...]

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All birds are worth watching, no matter how many times you’ve seen them.

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The shrubbery around the complex has been bursting with music these past few days. Song Sparrows are gearing up for spring, and they aren’t letting us forget it! BirdNote has a nice homage to this often-overlooked bird. And here’s the Song Sparrow that frequents our feeder and helps tidy up whatever gets dropped on the [...]

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