As much as I love my winter birds, I'm really looking forward to Spring migration. I'm anxious to get my garden cleaned up and start planting... which is nuts, considering we've still got two-foot-deep snow drifts in parts of our yard, and the Horned Larks are still singing away in our fields. (I love listening to them when I'm out in the yard with the pup. Such a pretty sound.)
Regardless, though, I saw my first signs of Spring this week: the maple trees around us are being tapped for syrup, and I saw a robin fly across the road on my to work yesterday. Yeah, yeah, I know, some robins are over-wintering here now. But I'm going to go with it being a migrant. Makes me feel better. ;-)
I also watched Mr. Northern Cardinal attack his reflection in my car's side-view mirror this morning. I figure that's a sign that he's ready to start fighting for mating rights.
The downside to Spring is that all of a sudden we've got flocks of Starlings taking over our feeders. I hate those birds so, so, sooooo much. Them and the House Sparrows. Ugh. The Starlings are also brilliant mimics, and have fooled me and Dave more than once. They have a stellar red-tailed hawk cry, and lately they've been singing the first few notes of the male cardinal's call.
Haven't been taking many pictures around the yard, but I've been visiting a really lovely park down in Cambridge and getting some nice shots of the usual winter suspects - Black-capped Chickadees, American Tree Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, White-breasted Nuthatches. I even saw a beautiful male House Finch a few weeks back, and a Song Sparrow. It's early for a Song Sparrow, I think, but since the winter's been so mild, maybe it's not that unusual.
Here are a couple of my faves:
No comments:
Post a Comment