As much fun as it is to go birding with the local pros, I just don’t want to get out that early. And if it’s cold, or worse — cold and rainy — nothing gets me out.
I value my year with the birders, though. I wouldn’t have learned so much exciting information on my own. But I made a decision to stick with my first love: plants and butterflies. Butterflies wait ‘til the sun is out. Fine with me!
That’s not to say I’ve deserted birds. I’m fortunate to have a mesquite limb running parallel at eye level four feet from the kitchen sink windows that I heap with black oil sunflower seeds every morning.
I also am blessed with a Resaca, also viewed from the kitchen windows. The map calls it a horseshoe lake. It might now be a pond, but there’s no denying, back in the day, it was a tributary to the mighty Rio Bravo.
If you missed the local bird counts in December and January, there’s another opportunity to help in a great bird research project sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.
It’s the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) — Friday, February 12 through Monday, February 15, 2016.
It’s easy. You don’t have to get up early or even leave your yard — you can do it in your jammies and submit information online. AND! There’s an app for that.
Here’s the easy to follow information:
http://gbbc.birdcount.org/get-started/
https://www.audubon.org/content/about-great-backyard-bird-count
Be sure to log your hours for volunteer reporting, as it counts for Field Research.
Now, if you think manning feeders is for wimps, it takes a lot of precise planning and organization.
Last year, a week prior to the Big Event, I removed the window screens and scrubbed the windows inside and out at the kitchen window. I spent the next week conducting photography experiments. The evening before GBBC, I again washed the windows inside and out.
Bright and early on the first day of GBBC, I heaped sunflower seeds on the branch, corralled the cats (they like to lunge at the windows and watch the birds disperse) and cleared the kitchen counter of unnecessary gear.
As precise as a surgeon, I laid out the tools of the trade: camera with medium lens, point and shoot camera, binoculars, bird guide book, sharp pencils and a fresh notepad. For activity beyond the mesquite limb, I positioned the scope on a tripod and camera with long lens on another. I then stood guard like a sentry quietly scouting a perimeter. All the regulars showed up.
This wouldn’t be a proper bird article without The List (partial, from feeder, yard, and Resaca):
Brown Thrashers
Cardinals
Green Jays
Tufted Titmouse
Golden-fronted Woodpeckers
Red-winged Blackbirds
Sparrows
Doves
Yellow–rumped warbler
Rat, squirrel
Grackles
Kiskadees
Altamira Orioles
Mockingbirds
Turkey Vultures
Eastern Phoebe
Kingfisher
Whistling Ducks
Cormorant
Common Gallinule
Grebes
Ruddy Duck
Redheads
Scaups
Coots
Great Blue Herron
Great Egret
Nice article. So much planning! It would be a shame if birds didn’t cooperate and show up to partake of your special feast for them. Good luck this year.
Thanks, Frank. There’s always SOMETHING to look at here! Yesterday I had a wee Fiery Skipper on a mist flower bloom. It would have been easy to miss if the sun hadn’t been bouncing off the skipper’s fiery wings.
It is hard to tell from this angle but your picture of the Redhead Duck looks like it might be a Canvasback (?).
Marilyn, thanks for inquiring. It is hard to tell on such a wee photo. The bird ID’d as a Redhead in my raw photo has a blue/grey bill with a black tip and white subterminal ring, which according to my reference material is a Redhead. The Canvasback has a long dark bill.