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Monday, November 18, 2013

FeederWatching - Week 2

My second session of observations for Project FeederWatch was still pretty quiet but marginally better than last week. I increased my species count by two, to 16, and added some new species that I had not seen last week. Here is this week's list:

Northern Mockingbird
Blue Jay
Tufted Titmouse
House Sparrow
Carolina Chickadee
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Pine Warbler
Chipping Sparrow (!)
American Crow
Downy Woodpecker
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Eastern Bluebird
Carolina Wren
Northern Cardinal 
Rufous Hummingbird
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  

The biggest surprise to me was that Chipping Sparrow. It seemed awfully early to be seeing this wonderful little bird, so I checked my records, and, indeed, the earliest date I had seen one in my yard previously was December 17. So this little guy was at least a month early.

No doves of any type showed up this week. A flock of about a dozen White-winged Doves flew over the yard, but didn't drop in so I couldn't count them.

My most exciting discovery of the day, rivaling the Sparrow, was another bird that I wasn't able to include in my count. It was a single American Goldfinch which flew over the yard, but didn't stop. He was also almost a month earlier than my previous earliest sighting of this species in the yard. Time to stock up on nyger seed and get those feeders filled and ready.

4 comments:

  1. You certainly have more variety than we do here right now, although I think I have seen most of those varieties here at one time or another over the past five years. Nowadays it's mostly HOSPs, Northern Cardinals and the Red Bellied woodpecker. I'm looking forward to seeing the Chippies again.

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    1. It's always a treat to have Chippies in the yard. I was just really surprised to see this one so early.

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  2. I only saw one bird today :( My feeders have been out for 5 days. Hopefully they'll show up for my second count day tomorrow.

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    1. I'm sure your traffic will pick up as the season wears on and as the birds become more familiar with your feeders. Things are still pretty slow in my yard, too, but it usually gets more exciting in December.

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