Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Cool Mornings

I love the fall season when the first cool mornings arrive. I like to take my coffee outside and watch as the bird activity picks up. Cardinals are normally the first birds to arrive at my feeders. They are usually followed closely by Blue Jays and Red-bellied Woodpeckers. The Ruby-throated Hummingbirds buzz around my nectar feeders. They are down to the point now where one bird tries to dominate all the feeders. There are still enough around where she has a tough time with that, but she tries. I saw my first winter resident migrant this morning. A Brown Thrasher was in the thick yaupons along the fence line. If he hadn't made the "chip" call, I probably never would have seen him. Fall migration was really great in my yard on Sunday, Sept. 19. A male Baltimore Oriole caught my attention in the hackberry tree in my back yard. I got my binoculars to take a look at him and also found a Philadelphia Vireo and Black-and-white Warbler in the same tree. I normally don't get a lot of migrants in my backyard, so that was a lot of fun to see them. Also, an Indigo Bunting visited my ground feeder yesterday.

The hummingbirds were not as plentiful this year as they have been in years past. So far I've only gone through just over 20 lbs. of sugar. They aren't draining my feeders after a couple of days now either. Others have said they are having higher than average numbers of hummingbirds at their feeders. In a couple of weeks, the majority of them will have migrated out of here down to Mexico and Central America.

I've had a ton of fun with my BirdCam! I have put it on my birdbath to see what visits it during the day. Here's my favorite picture of a Eurasian Collared-Dove that just splashed the water to take a bath.
The birdbath as it was made was far too deep for birds to get in and bathe in it. I had tried putting bricks and other rocks in it to make it more shallow, but the birds never seemed to be comfortable getting in. So, I went to Home Depot and bought 40 lbs. of concrete and filled in the birdbath to make it more shallow. I added some of the rocks into the concrete to give the birds a little better footing. Now it goes from very shallow at the edges to about 1" deep in the middle. The birds have been using it like crazy now! So, if you're looking for a birdbath to add to your yard, and you actually want the birds to use it, go with the more shallow ones over the really deep ones.