Wild Bird Wednesday

We love seeing all the birds around our yard. Here are a few of our regular visitors.

Gray Catbird

Many birds love our mealworm feeder. We made a small change to this feeder by adding a baffle to the stand.

Female Eastern Bluebird

The main reason for adding the baffle is to keep the chipmunks from pigging out on the mealworms. It has worked perfectly and so far this year we haven’t been going through as many mealworms as we have in the past.

Male Eastern Bluebird

This pair of bluebirds are our second pair of the season. We have two bluebird boxes on opposite sides of our yard. The first pair in the north box have successfully raised their young. The second pair of bluebirds were aggressive towards the first pair so after the babies fledged the first family left the yard. The second pair of bluebirds are now sitting on eggs in the south box so we hope to see more babies soon.

Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird

It’s too bad the hummingbird didn’t turn his head just right to catch the sun on his gorget. We are again hosting a male and female Ruby-throated Hummingbird so we hope to see some young ones in a few weeks.

Don’t forget you can click on the images to see a larger version.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the birds we see around our yard. I’m joining the Wild Bird Wednesday blog hop. You can stop by and see some more birds.

Read Full Post »

Wild Bird Wednesday – Turf War

Hi everyone! Wow! Did we have an exciting day last week. On Tuesday, May 19th a pair of male Ruby-throated Hummingbirds waged a fierce all day battle for the rights to our backyard. I noticed them first thing in the morning when I took the dogs out for their bathroom duties.

Let the games begin!

Throughout the day I would glance out the window and see them still going at it.

Get off my feeder!

Occasionally they would both land on the feeder and both would take some sips from the feeder.

A temporary truce for refueling

But that wouldn’t last long and they would be at it again.

Who will be the first to give up?

They were so consumed by their turf battle that I was able to get within about 8 feet to take these pictures. I also took some video of the action that you can see below. The video is a bit long but that was after I cut it down from the 20 clips I took of them. I apologize that the birds aren’t always in the best focus but I wanted to demonstrate how fierce some of the action was. The camera had difficulty focusing on the small birds and instead would focus on the background. If you listen closely you can hear when they hit each other. You can also see that they seem to take turns being the one on the feeder and the one trying to knock the other off.

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/129004352]

If you can’t see the video you can go here to view it.

At times one of the birds would be on the feeder.

Whatcha looking at?

While the other was on top of the hook holding the feeder. It seemed that the one on top would not see when the other flew onto the feeder.

Where did he go?

There were brief periods of rest between skirmishes. I caught this picture of them both preening while sitting on the trellis in the perennial garden.

The arrows show where the hummingbirds are sitting.

I was getting exhausted watching this battle going on. It continued all day long until after sundown. (Yes, I turned off the lights in the kitchen and looked out at about 8:30 pm to see them still going at it) The next day only one male hummingbird remained. I would like to think the loser of the battle flew on to find his own territory.

I hope you have enjoyed this edition of Wild Bird Wednesday and will take some time to stop by the blog hop host too.

Read Full Post »