13th annual Great Backyard Bird Count

This is always fun

wrens & nuthatches here, you?

Pine warbler

At the feeder - yea!

Titmice, Carolina chickadees, both nuthatches, Carolina wrens, 3 house finches, 2 Northern cardinal males fighting in the wax myrtle, mockers here and there. Ruby-crowned kinglet has been on the suet block for several days now.

What's out there?

What have you been seeing?

The culprits

Location: Cemetery suet feeder

Barred owl going off

Sounds like it's near Coventry Road. Several repeats, 5:15 PM.

Pond opening is ever smaller

The mallards sleep in the water or on the ice; the muscovys prefer the grass where they can make a quick "getaway" of maybe 8'. Put out new suet block this AM - they're lasting about 2 days in this cold weather. Also saw sparrow flocks, what I took to be Songs and White-throateds.

In the backyard, several towhees came by for water at the little waterfall, along with American robins, Titmice and a Ruby-crowned kinglet.

You can see the kinglet's crown, slightly depressed

Here his wingbars are evident, and a bit of his split eye-ring

Bluebirds & Slate-colored Juncos

9AM cemetery walk - several Eastern Bluebirds and Slate-colored Juncoes were clustered on the suet feeder there - they don't seem to mind bacon grease at all. Makes me think of Cattle egrets at a Jamaican place we stayed at: meals were on a veranda and the egrets would perch on any vacant chairs. The instant you leaned back from the table they'd make a bee-line for leftover scrambled eggs. Another guest's comment "That's just wrong" gave me fits.

Mockers seemed stupified by the temperature in the teens as they perched in the sun, fully fluffed, and let you come much closer than normal, within a few steps.