Dear Readers,
I hope that you are all fit and well and managing to keep a smile on your face.
Within minutes of posting my email last week, about the birds, these beauties landed, in the trees, near my feeders. The bright red one is a male House Finch and the other is a Tree Sparrow, which has a two toned beak and a small spot on its chest as distinguishing features. The Song Sparrow was another, and it has a striated chest with a spot and a uniformly colored beak and perky tail. It is probably a little darker too.
These birds were lucky enough to get some sunshine, which also heralded a return to our nesting boxes of a pair of Tree Swallows, for a very brief time. The damp cold weather put them off very quickly and they disappeared once again!
Last week’s snow brought a surprise, in the form of a lone male Evening Grosbeak, along with our Cardinal, a bunch of female and male Redwing Blackbirds, Juncos and a chubby cheeked Chipmunk! We have also been visited by two Red-breasted Nuthatches, who have even been feeding together, on one of our peanut feeders, which isn’t, for us, a very common occurrence at all. As well as our “Chippie”, we still get the Red, Black and Grey Squirrels to our feeders. The Red one is actually using one of our multi-compartmental nesting boxes, in the back yard, to raise its 4 young ones, as life carries on, regardless.
Stay safe and take care.
Cheers, John Baldwin
