Update on Yard Birds

This has been a good week for yard birds but unfortunately I don't have any photographs to go with it.  Blame the weather! 

We had a Red-tailed hawk fly either over our house or from trees in our yard to a perch overlooking our neighbor's hillside.  We don't get many Red-tails here due to the forest-like habitat.  I would love for them to get a couple of squirrels! 

Our yard is filled with Dark-eyed juncos, sometimes between 30-40 at a time.  I usually scatter hulled sunflower seed on the ground but they make short work of it.  The juncos are very attuned to my presence, and often when I broadcast the seed my subsequent handfuls fall on top of juncos already availing themselves of the first handfuls. 

I watched rather carefully after one of my broadcasts and there, for the fourth winter in a row, was a relatively rare (for this area) Slate-colored junco.  I would dearly love to know if it has been the same one each year but there's no hope of that without banding.  Again I was able to distinguish this relatively rare visitor not so much by its plumage as by its behavior.  It just doesn't quite fit in with the feeding patterns and gregariousness of the other juncos, although I can't tell you why.  If it weren't for its behavior I might never see it in all the activity of the other juncos. 

Also in the yard this past week:  a Northern flicker, both male and female Downy woodpeckers, at least one (and probably more) Golden-crowned kinglets, a Brown creeper, Song sparrow, Golden-crowned sparrow and the return of one of our favorite winter visitors, the Varied thrushes.  The thrushes often like to run with the American robins, so when we have robins in the yard it pays to examine each closely for a possible thrush.  The robins are rather common birds.  As most of you know, nobody, but nobody loves a bird bath more than a robin!  I often have to go out and refill the bird bath after a single robin bathes. 

We're still nursing along at least two Anna's hummingbirds.  On the one hand I feel guilty about feeding them through the winter, but on the other hand they're here during the winter whether I have my feeder out or not, so it seems like I should help them along.  It gets to be a lot of trouble when we have freezing weather during the day, but then I think about the impact on the hummingbirds and figure that it might be a matter of life or death for them.  I'm still trying to come up with some way to heat the hummingbird feeder other than with a lamp. 

And on a very sad note, I got an email from a friend late Friday night that he had found an owl with an injured wing on the road.  He wrapped it in a blanket and put it in a box and wanted to know what to do with it.  I met him with a wildlife intake/rehabilitator/friend Saturday morning.  She was concerned the owl couldn't be saved but took it to the vet.  I just heard this morning that the owl had a compound fracture at a joint and couldn't be saved.  It makes me sad... this was an absolutely beautiful bird.  I've seen a lot of owl photographs but none can do the bird justice when it's alive and sitting less than two feet from you.  The feathers and features were absolutely beautiful. 

We thought at the time that it might have been a Western Screech owl but I was told this morning that it was a Short-eared owl.