Any birdwatchers out there?

[Witsec7]

Spring is here and the blue jays are doing mating displays. The swifts and swallows arrived last week and today its the day of the goldfinches!!

[hagia sophia]

I'm an amateur birder. I have a couple of bird feeders that cost me about $75 per month to fill. I know I should be sending that money to buy bibles for the pagan babies but the pagan babies are far away and the goldfinches are right here.

Yesterday I saw a hawk swoop in and around a feeder. It was very dramatic and it sent all the birds tearing out. A tufted titmouse flew right into my sun porch window. Bang!

It lay on the ground panting for a while, and I wasn't sure it was going to make it. Since I wasn't about to attempt avian mouth-to-mouth I just consoled myself by humming "Circle of Life." But eventually he righted himself, shook it off and flew away.

[LittleMy]

Yes, I used to be a pretty enthusiastic birdwatcher, and now that my children are getting older ( small children and hides don't mix) I definitely want to do more.

Even though I live in busy city, I'm always amazed at the variety of birds in my small backyard, blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, house sparrows, blackbirds, robins, wood pigeons, and collared doves are all regular visitors...and every Summer I get greenfinches and goldfinches in my smoke tree :)

The swifts aren't here yet, they don't usually make it to the UK until the end of April, but I love them, I always feel they are such mysterious birds, first to get here and usually the first to leave of our Summer visitors, they really make a Summer for me.

[kpmom]

I put peanuts in the bird feeders in my back yard (in the shell, roasted but not salted) and the birds go crazy for them. Much more so than for bird seed.

This morning I had blue jays, a male cardinal (I've seen a female there too), and two different kinds of woodpeckers (Gila and Redheaded).

This is the first time this year I noticed the Redheaded Woodpecker. I wonder if he/she is on the way back up north?

They're all beautiful, but that red cardinal is my favorite.

[fundifugee]

hummingbirds are my favourite. Where we are, we also get to see lots of seabirds -- goldeneyes, pintails, scoters, grebes, loons, buffleheads, herons, kingfishers, oystercatchers, mergangesers. I am just learning how to identify some of them.

[B5SnowDog]

We get three kinds of dove - white-winged, mourning, and ring-necked. We also get red-winged blackbirds (we're close to a lake), sparrows, finches, blue jays, cardinals, juncos, the occasional pelican (even though we're 500 miles from the ocean), and geese fly over every night. Several years ago, about 30 yellow-headed blackbirds showed up ahead of a storm. I'd never seen them before and they haven't been back.