Hello Tweets,

Today we enjoyed a stormy,blustery day watching our yard birds with nice splashes of color contributed by our resident Anna's Hummingbirds and Townsend's Warblers. We have had Anna's Hummingbirds resident in our yard for nearly 6 years now and currently have 6-7 birds with breeding activity that has been recently noted. The Townsend's Warblers have been a recent winter addition to our yard with up to 4 birds that have been coming regularly to our suet feeders along with a roaming flock of 25+ Bushtits. All our yard birds use our suet feeders,including both species of kinglets and it is a joy to watch the Bushtits gathering on any available perch and place on these feeders and sometimes they almost cover the entire feeder. On rare occasions we have seen our Anna's Hummingbirds hover around our patio suet feeders and even twice try and sample it,but most like just of curiosity. Our homemade suet is a treat for all our birds and we currently go through 15 cakes in less than 3 weeks! We also offer black oil sunflower seeds and crushed peanuts to specialty species,as well as Chicken Scratch for our ground dwellers.This morning during severe windy conditions we had an adult Sharp-shinned Hawk fly through our yard,which was a yard year bird. We have also had 1-2 small flocks of Red Crossbills fly over our yard over the past week ranging from 7-12 birds.

Other nice species encountered in our yard recently have been a 12-15 Band-tailed Pigeons,2 pairs of Downy Woodpeckers,2-3 Northern Flickers,a Hermit Thrush,Spotted Towhee,Song Sparrow,a pair of Bewick's Wrens and other more common residential species. We have placed recent photos of just some of our yard delights onto our website for your viewing. These photos can be accessed at the following link: http://www.pbase.com/godwit/yardbirds/


It is times like this we can appreciate our yard birds!


Good birding,

Ruth and Patrick Sullivan
Fircrest,WA
godwit513 at msn.com