Towheeblog

The local Red-breasted Nuthatch never misses a day, sometimes it seems like he arrives on an hourly schedule to use our feeders.  Does he even remember how to climb along a tree trunk?  The Collared-Doves and scrub-jay are ever present, unless there’s a predator in the trees.  Most of the other species in and out of our garden are less predictable.
Last night we heard a Great Horned Owl near the house–first time in months.  This morning there was a tooting pygmy-owl at Grenfell Park along Baker Creek Road.  We saw neither owl, of course.

For the first time in weeks a starling was in our garden yesterday.  Recently they’ve been out harvesting in the fields.  As the supply of seeds and insects there diminishes they will slowly re-invade the town. Crows, gulls, overhead geese, robins, woodpeckers in October, waxwings–maybe, maybe not.  The Bewick’s Wrens were regular last year, this year rare.  Ditto the Song Sparrows.  Yet the American Goldfinches don’t seem interested in going south. The junco count in my garden is now up to seven, less than a month ago we saw our first of the season.  The crowd will build as winter comes on.

NUTHATCHES”

White-breasted rarely venture into our garden but I can often hear or see them a few blocks away in the oak grove at Michelbook and 13th:

Other garden birds (Except the dead Fox Sparrow at Wennerberg Park–I have yet to see alive one this season):

Above: group shot from left to right–junco, House Sparrow, goldfinches(Amer); Black-capped Chickadee; Fox Sparrow corpse; Song and then Golden-crowned Sparrow.  Below: Chestnut-backed Chickadee chiseling off bits of sunflower seed; male junco on rabbit of cement; Golden-crowned Sparrow; Red-breasted Nuthatch in possession of suet log.