Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What tyoe of local bird means Spring to you?

Bluebirds. I build houses for them.

Meadowlarks Robins

and Crocus's

Mtn Bluebirds, purdy little things, although I also enjoy big breasted bed thrashers...

Cardinals love to hear them singing.

Yup

Only in the spring?

Orioles.

I had never seen one until a couple started hanging out here last year. They like grape jelly and oranges. A pair raised a couple of chicks in the tree outside my window last year. I'm hoping they return.

,...beautiful birds.

Robins can be seen as early as late Feb. IIRC. Followed a couple weeks later usually mid march by the red wing blackbirds. We're on a bay on Lake Ontario with lots of marsh around so they love it here. Saw my first turkey vultures a week or so back. This afternoon we had about 15-20 of them circling around overhead. We have a couple purple martin houses set up out back and they're usually here by about mid April.

only safe to plant corn when you hear the whippoorwill.

Mosquitos started up the other day.

Killed two, one got me last night in the shop. Wife saw one in the house.

Sure sign of spring and water that isn't frozen through.

Oh, and my wife said she saw the tree swallows too.

Blue Jays , Orioles , Cardinals .
Seriously imnotw , Robins .

When I lived in New York State it was redwings, eastern phoebes and spring peepers (frogs).

A bit tougher down here since we ordinarily don’t have much of a winter to speak of. Purple Martins are the first tropical migrant to return (beginning end of January) but for the Continent as whole I listen for the flight calls of upland sandpipers passing overhead at night , spring and fall, coming/going between Argentina and the Northern Plains.

Ain’t heard any yet, any day now.

Robins show up two weeks before the Meadowlarks.

There’s a bunch of related orioles in the Tropics, Baltimore Orioles spend half their lives down there where they are important pollinators for a species of tree which flower petals mimics the yellow/orange colors of the mature Baltimore males.

The Baltimore’s particular niche is to leave the Tropics and all the competing oriole species down there to come here to breed, the only oriole over most of their breeding range. The plus side is they can raise more young, the down side is losses in migration are heavy..

Every full color male Baltimore Oriole you see is at least two years old and has survived at least two return trips to/from the Tropics.

Robins were starting to show up here before the big ice storm hit N TX.

Saw my first TX Bluebonnet flowers today. A sure sign of Spring. Although I bet they’ve been blooming for a couple of weeks in the TX Hill Country.

Swans,,,

The Greater Double-Breasted Tittywobbler

150 robins then 9 million of these.....

Never seen one here in TX.
Although I have seen a rare Painted Bunting twice here at the Ranch a few years ago. Cool little birds!

https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/painted-bunting

That might be fun with a 12 ga. 🤠