The Orioles are Back!!

The Orioles came back yesterday, April 30! That's one day earlier than last year. Here's a picture of a male Northern Oriole eating grape jelly at a feeder in our garden.



I heard a House Wren calling this morning, too. So, spring is really here.

For anyone interested in phenology, the Toads are really early this year. They usually don't start singing until mid May or later. This year, they're about a month early. Here's a photo of what they're up to in our pond. The eggs are the long, squiggly black strings.



The wildflowers are blooming early, too. Here's a picture of Bloodroot in bloom. It's one of the spring ephemerals. It blooms quickly and then the foliage dies back and the plant goes dormant in late June, only to remerge again the following spring. They're called "Bloodroot" because the inside of the root is red.

The Birds are Back!

Spring migration has started! I always hear the birds before I see them. The first migrant I heard was, of course, a Robin. But, they've been sort of overwintering here in Wisconsin the last few years. So, who knows where they "migrated" from.

The first true migrant I heard was the Bluebird. It always takes my brain a few seconds to process the familiar sound as something I haven't heard in 10 months! The Bluebirds first showed up at the end of March.

Bluebirds were followed by Song Sparrows and Killdeer. The Woodcocks started calling in the fields in the evening the first week in April.

Trumpeter Swans migrated overhead for a few weeks from late March through early April. We'd sometimes hear them at night.

The Phoebes came back on April 10. And on April 11, the first Tree Swallows showed up! Now, I really believe that winter is over.

A Field Sparrow called this morning. I love it's slightly mournful, but beautiful, call.

The White-Throated Sparrows should be showing up any day now.

Often, it's hard to see the birds well enough to identify them. But, their calls are unmistakable.

Get a good CD of bird calls to learn how to "bird by ear." Anything by Lang Elliot is worth every penny.

Help Track Climate Change in Your Backyard!

Do you keep track of when the robins come back each spring? I started jotting notes on my Weather Calendar each year for when I saw the first bluebird or heard the first spring peeper.

Now, there's an opportunity for all of us to send in our nature notes to a Web site that will track all of our data nationwide. It's a great opportunity to see what might be changing over the years by enlisting an army of citizen volunteers.

It's easy to sign up (I just did it). Go to http://www.usanpn.org/?q=content/participate and sign up. They provide a list of the plants that they'd like you to monitor.

What they're looking for is when do leave emerge, flowers open and fruits ripen.

They'll be adding more features in the future, like a place to upload any phenology data that you've recorded over the years. That will be posted along with Aldo Leopold's data!

They'll also be adding more species of plants and animals in the future.

So turn that hobby into a contribution to science!

Redpolls and Siskins and Crossbills, Oh My!

It must be a bad winter in Canada this year 'cause we have alot of birds at our feeders that usually don't come this far south.

For the first time in 20 years, we have White-Winged Crossbills! I'd heard that they were spotted in our area, so I was watching for them. When I finally spotted one in the heated bird bath, I was surprised at how big they were. They're just a little smaller than a Cedar Waxwing, but larger than a finch, junco or sparrow.


You can't miss the males -- they're a ruby red color with white bands on their wings. It was hard to see the crossed bills with my binoculars, but once I got a look, that was strange to see, too.

The Pine Siskins and Redpolls are occasional winter visitors to our feeders. But, this year, we have flocks of them.

All of these northern birds eat spruce seeds, so the seed crop in Canada must have been pretty small this year. When there's no food to eat, the birds migrate south in search of seeds.

We have lots of spruce trees in 50 acres of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land. As we walk through the woods, we hear and see the Siskins and Redpolls.

So, keep an eye on your feeders -- you never know what you might see!

Join in on the Great Backyard Bird Count!

What's the Great Backyard Bird Count? It's an event from February 13-16, 2009, where anyone can submit online a list of birds that they see in their backyards.

You can count birds for 15 minutes or all day if you want. Then, tally the highest number of birds of each species that you see together at any one time.

But, what's cool is that you submit your counts online at the Great Backyard Bird Count web site. And then you can see "real-time" results from your count and every one else's counts instantly on this Web site!

It's a lot of fun to see your birds and to see the list of birds that other participants are counting.

This information also helps those who monitor bird populations and movements. In fact, it can even be used to show the affects of climate change. If birds in large numbers are living further north during the winter, what does that mean? We can only guess until we have enough data for enough years to show trends rather than just a rare occurence.

So, take the opportunity to join in on the count. It's citizen science that's helpful for the birds and for us. Plus, what else do you have to do on in the middle of February?

Bluejay Convention

Today we had a Bluejay convention at one of our feeders! I counted 15 at one time. That's a record for us.

The weather is changing and the wind is howling from the northwest. So, these guys know to eat as much as they can to get through the night.

Did you know that birds are constantly shivering during the winter to stay warm? They have to keep an internal temperature of about 102 degrees F and to do that, they shiver.

But Chickadees can actually drop their core temperature at night into the 70s. To do that they have to eat their weight in food each day to have enough fat to get through the night when it's really cold outside.

So, after a night of sub-zero temperatures, breakfast is really, really important for birds! Be sure that your feeders are full in the morning!

An even colder January day!

The low this morning was -22 degrees F! And it's supposed to be even colder tomorrow morning.

So, I filled the bird feeders with sunflower and thistle seeds and poured cracked corn on the ground for the birds. All 7 suet feeders were full, but the suet felt like a rock. That didn't stop the woodpeckers from pecking away at it!

We saw one resident Pheasant at the corn under the White Spruce tree. There are a few branches missing on the south side of this spruce, so it's a great place to leave corn or seeds. The surrounding branches on the north, east and west sides of the tree offer great protection from the weather and predators.

But, what seems to bring in the birds almost as much as the free food is the water. We keep a heater in the little bird pond all winter and the birds flock to it.

Winter bird watching.

It's a cold January day. The bird feeders are full of seed and suet.

Here's a photo that really shows what those of us in cold climates are looking at these days.

Staring out of our windows into the cold, white winter. But, look at that color on those birds!

A Coopers Hawk visited the backyard this morning. The Blue Jays screamed and all the birds took cover. So, I put the thistle feeders right next to a big White Spruce so my little finches and Pine Siskins can escape from predators and bully birds.

I love seeing the birds up close.