Towheeblog

All winter long one or two Red-breasted Nuthatches are regularly at our feeders.  They  take both sunflowers seeds and suet.  They sometimes cache one or the other.  They appear, serious, focused on food and are rarely heard.  Now ’tis spring and an attitude adjustment is noticed  I am sometimes seated outside and Red’s curiosity causes him to linger, to watch, perhaps to ponder.

In the above sequence I think he may be cleaning off his beak?  Or did he find a convenient crevice in the bark where he could cache a tidbit?

THE UN-RED

The bird population in our garden changes almost daily now.  The eight greedy squirrels persists and are likely the same gang I saw back in October.  But coming and going is part of migration season.
All the Audubon;s Warblers are gone.  Two myrtles continue, for now.  I am down to one junco.  A month ago I could see twenty or more on the pavement and ground at once.  Most have gone off to nest in some dense conifer forest. The only flock left in the garden is of siskins, around ten of them.  The Bushtit flock has dispersed into two-part nesting units.  The Black-capped Chickadees, Bewick’s Wrens and Spotted Towhees often come as a pair now.  Ditto the nesting Bushtits.  The wrens often give me a song or two.  Today I heard a siskin singing, completer with its rising-pitch zzzzzzzzzt at the song’s finale. They and the lingering Golden-crowned Sparrows will depart soon. And I don’t see Chestnut-backed Chickadees as regularly as I would back in January.  Flickers and Downys are about and occasionally use the suet.  Starlings–every day in almost any season.  Robins are about  but never deign to eat our offerings.  I have seen four swallow species this year but none passing overhead at our house, yet.
Smart deer at Linfield College, and towhee in bush there as well.  Male towhee on cement in our garden.

Above: Acorn Woodpecker in oak, where else?  Robin in grass, where else?  BC Chickadee at suet, naturally.

CALL OF THE OPEN ROAD     When the trees are too far apart, take the best route available:

Just hangin’