Seasonal change at the feeder
Our feeders have gotten very quiet. We've hit that point in the season where the winter birds are leaving, and the spring/summer birds haven't yet arrived. The varied thrush are mostly gone. Where ten days ago we had a big flock of juncos (30+), the last two days we have zero.
The juncos are interesting to me; they're a year-round bird here in our part of Washington, but something I hand't really paid attention to until this year is that the flock of juncos we have here that breeds and brings up their young in summer is not the same flock that winters here. We have very distinct gaps twice a year where they're -- just gone. Then you start seeing a few individuals, and after a few weeks, you have a flock again. The song sparrows seem gone (but we'll have some back again soon), and the fox sparrows have moved on as well (see you next winter), as well as the one white-throated we seem to get every winter.
Localized migrations is an aspect of our birds I think we don't pay a lot of attention to, but once I started noticing it, I found it fascinating. We have summer American Goldfinches and this winter we had a winter flock, but it's been gone a few weeks and I'm sure they aren't the same birds.
Our regulars are here: Stellar's Jays, Mourning Doves, Spotted Towhees, Anna's. Merlin keeps catching Golden-crowned kinglets on and off, and a Hutton's Vireo up in the tree, but a wintering Hermit thrush seems to have moved on. I'm seeing and hearing the Cooper's Hawk on and off, but where we were getting owl hoots at times (mostly Great Horned, which we've seen, but also Barred) that's gone quiet. our feeders see a female Hairy woodpecker daily, and a gorgeous male downy once in a while, and I'm hearing the Pileateds roam the trees in the area, but they haven't visited the feeders for a good while. We see Northern Flickers very occasionally right now, not sure why they aren't more frequent.
As we get deeper into spring we'll see activity pick up again. Last year, that included Grosbeaks (black headed and Evening, with the Black headed nesting and raising young nearby while the evening showed up to feed on the way through) and Western Tanagers, which also fledged successfully here. It'll be interesting to see what shows up this year, and whether there'll be a fun surprise in the group.
One of my plans this year is to try to better naturalize the area around the feeder with some perches and landing places that look natural to the camera, instead of the very obvious “it’s a feeder” views I get here from my office. We’ll see what I can do when I finally get around to working on that.
