Winter Non-Chickens

Not all of our feathered friends are chickens.  We’ve got a collection of birdfeeders by our house that draw in birds both winter and summer.  Last spring I posted pictures of the spring migrators that stop by our feeders on their way north in a post I called "Spring Non-Chickens".  In this post I'm sharing some pictures of some of the year-round residents that show up at our feeders in the wintertime.  

Of course in the winter, we don't have the variety of bird species showing up for their sunflower seed or suet snacks that we see in the spring, but quantity perhaps makes up for diversity.  The feeders are busy from sunup to sundown, so we don't have to wait to be entertained - all we have to do is look out the window anytime we want!

Here are a few examples of what we see:

This is a female purple finch enjoying a sunflower seed.  We get both purple and gold finches in huge flocks in the winter.  The purple finch is, of course, really hard to tell from the house finch.  Is the bird in this picture really a purple finch or is it a house finch?  I'm going with purple, but I could be wrong!

Here's another purple finch shot.  That's the female in front and her boyfriend in the back.

Here's a cute li'l brown creeper sitting on the deck rail waiting for his turn at the suet feeder.  These little guys spend a lot of time climbing up tree trunks and make tree climbing look easy as pie.  Here's a bit of bird trivia:  Brown creepers always start near the bottom and climb up tree trunks while nuthatches start at the top and work their way down.  Both are foraging for dormant insects in the tree bark.

Here's a nuthatch enjoying his turn on the suet feeder.

Here's another suet loving bird - a male downy woodpecker.  Downy and hairy woodpeckers are very similar in appearance, but it's easy to tell them apart because downys are smaller.  In both species, you can tell the males from the females by the red spot on their heads.

All woodpeckers have a taste for suet.  This large, prehistoric looking creature is a pileated woodpecker.  They're about the size of a crow and are very shy--they will only come to the feeders if they think nobody's around.  Even moving around inside the house is enough to send them off!

Here's a flicker - yet another woodpecker.  It's a little unusual for us to see flickers in the wintertime since we're in the northern part of their winter range, but this intrepid little bird was with us all winter long.

The chickadee, with it's black cap and bib, and petite size, has to be one of the cutest birds in the universe.  While finches fill up every available perch on the feeders all day long, and just sit there in a marathon pig-out session,  chickadees looks for a finch-free opening, then fly in, snag a seed, and fly off to a nearby branch to enjoy it!

Cardinals are hard to miss.  They've got all that beautiful red plumage, and unlike finches and other birds who molt to a duller plumage in the winter, cardinals keep their bright red color year round.  This male cardinal hangs out on the feeder while a goldfinch comes in for a nearby landing.

In addition to feeders, we also attract birds in the winter with a heated birdbath.  In the winter all available water is locked up as snow or ice.  And while birds can get by on snow, heating all that frozen water takes a lot of body heat!  The birdbath maintains between 35 and 45 degrees - not warm water by any means, but not frozen.  Here a goldfinch enjoys some unfrozen water.

Here a couple of goldfinches share the Nyjer feeder with a common redpoll, another bird in the finch family.  Redpolls have a handy stretchable esophagus - they can fill up their esophagus with so many seeds that it is pouched way out, then fly away to a more private spot to actually eat them. 

Gentle and sweet sounding mourning doves form strong pair bonds, so you usually see two of them together.  We're on the very edge of their winter range, but occasionally a pair will show up at our feeder in the winter.

I think the birds are in collusion with the other woods dwellers around our house.  The birds knock a lot of food to the ground, then the other animals come in and clean it up.  Here a flock of wild turkeys are doing just that. 

We've got baffles on all of our feeders to keep the squirrels at bay, but any seeds that fall to the ground are fair game.  Here a gray squirrel enjoys a sunflower seed snack on our deck.

Red squirrels don't hibernate per se, but they're much less active in the winter.  Nevertheless, we often see them on nice winter days scavenging for seeds on the ground under the feeders.  This little guy is sharing a meal with three of his large gray cousins.

If there's anything left after the squirrels and turkeys get done, the rabbits are all over it!  

Even the deer get in on the action.  Sunflower seeds are probably not their favorite food, but when forage gets covered by snow in the winter, they'll take whatever they can get.

Raccoons reduce their activity and their food consumption in the winter, but they do need to eat.  As omnivores and opportunists, they'll quite happily eat any spilled seeds they can lay their paws on.

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