Wild birds and tame

Tufted Titmouse

A hard, cold rain dissolved the snow that fell a few days earlier.  Now I am left with a gloomy, overcast sky and a fierce, biting wind.  In short, it’s not a great day for photography, which is why I’m posting a few photos from late last week.  They will have to do until the light improves.

I had a brief few hours of nearly warm weather before the rain arrived, which I used to quickly clean out the chicken pen and fill the bird feeders.  The chickens were suitably grateful.  Whenever I add new straw to the coop, no matter how I scatter it, they spend an hour or so fluffing and getting it just so.  I call it “rearranging the furniture” to suit their liking.  Afterwards, it looks the same to me as when I was done with it, but obviously my efforts don’t meet their exacting standards.  They aren’t happy with how I scatter the straw, so they have to re-do all my handiwork.

The feeder birds are less exacting. They are happy if the feeders are full, though sometimes the titmice and the chickadees toss seed out of the feeders until they get one they really like.  The chickens usually hop their way up 7-8 stairs to reach the back deck.  They clean up whatever the wild birds leave behind, leaving nothing for the squirrels.

Carolina Chickadee

Gray and white

Tufted titmouse

 Snow certainly always brings birds to my feeders. And during snows the birds tend not to grab a seed and then disappear for hours. They arrive and stay for hours, hopping into a tree only long enough to eat their precious seed or wait for an opening before diving into the feeders again.

Yesterday’s snow was no exception, so I will show you two of the regular visitors to my feeders. The first is a tufted titmouse, a tiny little bird that grabs a seed and then lights on a nearby twig to eat it. When gone, it immediately returns to the feeders for a second seed and then repeats the process. I’ve always thought they must use nearly as many calories as they get from their single seed in their flights back and forth.

My second gray bird today is the dark-eyed junco, a winter-only resident from the north, who seems to view this part of the world the way people around here do a winter in Florida. Pennsylvania is south to this little bird.


Dark-eyed junco



Both the junco and the titmice are regular winter visitors to my feeders, and both are as common as chickens during winter. I still like to see them.

Yesterday I got about 6” of snow, a good amount here for this time of year. The snow is already melting. In fact, late yesterday afternoon the snow was melting and falling at the same time with the temperature at 33-34. I also found it odd to hear robins singing during the falling snow, with twittering juncos providing back-up vocals. I don’t get that one every day. Not only was the idea of snow and robins a rarity, so was the simultaneous presence of both the summer and the winter residents. March 2013 is proving to be unusual in several respects. It certainly makes me wonder what’s going to be ahead in April.

Frosty Mountain Morning

My winter morning dawned cold and bright today with 11 degrees. This morning actually feels warmer than yesterday when the temperature was a few degrees warmer but the wind was brutal. I’m much happier with a colder temperature and no wind, thanks very much.

My bird feeders are emptying almost as fast I can fill them or at least that’s how it seems to me. Today’s little titmouse had just visited my feeder and was pausing, with his sunflower seed prize still in beak, before heading back into the woods. I think he saw one of my cats at the window and figured it was best to sit still for a few moments. Soon enough, he realized that a cat on the other side of a window was no threat and flew off.

Here’s my 2008 Roundtop bird list so far. The feeder birds have (f) behind their names:
Canada Goose
Mallard
Downy Woodpecker (f)
Northern Flicker
Blue Jay (f)
American Crow
Carolina Chickadee (f)
Black-capped Chickadee (f)
Tufted Titmouse (f)
White-breasted Nuthatch (f)
Eastern Bluebird
American Robin
European Starling
White-throated Sparrow (f)
Dark-eyed Junco (f)
Northern Cardinal (f)
House Finch
American Goldfinch (f)

January is a month where the total number of bird species I see at Roundtop typically range between 25-26, so with the 18 I’ve already seen, I can only really expect to find 7-8 more species. Turkey Vulture is still "missing" from my list so far, but I expect to see that this weekend. I did see several last weekend but not "quite" within the confines of Roundtop and my cabin so I didn’t count them.

Mourning Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker and Carolina Wren should also be "gimmee" birds as soon as I’m home in daylight to see them.

Red-tailed Hawk, Great-horned Owl, Northern Mockingbird, Hairy Woodpecker and Pileated Woodpecker are other January birds I normally have on my bird list. These can sometimes be slightly harder to find. Mockingbirds seem to head off the mountain and down to more protected areas in the coldest days, so I’ve occasionally gone throughout January without seeing one. Of the other four, the Pileated Woodpecker is the most likely to be the least likely sighting. They are always around but sometimes don’t make an appearance when I’m around. Black Vulture, Brown Creeper, and Song Sparrow are other possibilities.

January’s few hours of daylight are my biggest barrier to nudging the list much higher. Bird viewing is limited to the weekend, mostly even to Saturdays as I work a full day on Roundtop on Sundays.

Titmouse at the Feeder

This isn't the best photo, but I still couldn't resist. Who can't love a tiny bird with enough moxie to take a seed that size? Tufted titmice are a regular feeder visitor here on the mountain. I usually have 4-5 of them, as best I can count. They zoom in and out so quickly that it's rare to have many of them at the feeder at once. They land on the feeder, grab a seed and fly off, though often not too far off, to enjoy their prize and then will zip back to the feeder. I've wondered more than once if they don't use more energy getting their one seed than the seed gives them. Of course, this titmouse won't have that problem.

Here on the mountain, November has thus far been appropriately cool, with only one or two warmer than usual days. Leaves still persist, unusually, on many of the trees--especially the oaks. The color is mostly all gone from them, and they are crinkly, brown things that make scraping noises against their branches. It's a Halloween-spooky kind of sound.

I wish I had been at home yesterday. I returned to an empty finch feeder, not something the two small goldfinch that are regulars here would have done. I suspect something wonderful that I didn't see emtpied it. Siskins, perhaps? Redpolls? I will likely never know. It is a small mystery in a world of many and many larger mysteries. Whoever they were, at least they found food before disappearing back into the mystery from whence they came.