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Downey woodpecker finally sat still long enough for me to grab the camera and get a few pictures. He's been very shy.

Goldfinches are around constantly, as long as the sunflower seeds are kept filled.

Nice!

(They're mighty tasty little morsels too. A little too tough for a measly .300 Savage to knock down though.)

I was thinking might need a 22HP to take them on. He's wily...

Cardinal was there at the same time. Used to have about 4 pairs of cardinals around, now I think we're down to 1 pair this winter. Picture was through a window screen, so not as sharp.

I get a lot of hummers around here. Hummingbirds, not the other kind.

We still have carolina wrens here, their voices WAY outsize their lung capacity!

We have Downys & Common Flickers on the suite cakes.
The Pileated stay in the forest for the most part and drill dead trees. Large woodpecker at 16-19" long.

Had a couple this fall.

Better pics of that guy.

As near as we could count we had 17 hummingbirds until some sort of sparrow hawk found out. That sucker could fly right on a hummingbirds tail and went right thru the patio after them. We ended the year with 7.

That's a beautiful bird. We get a few northern flickers around here. Most woodpeckers are downey, hairy or red headed, and the red-headed rarely come to a feeder. Don't seem to like towns much at all.

We've had this guy stopping by a few times over the last few years. This pic is from 2019.

I've rarely seen any hummingbirds in Nebraska. This is the first year we tried putting out a feeder for them, and we were thrilled to get a pair to stop by. It turned into a challenge to get some good pictures of them..

Fireball2, I suspect your hummingbird murderer suspect would be a Sharp Shinned Hawk, sort of a scaled-down Cooper's. We have a few of them here but mostly it's Cooper's Hawks that raid the bird feeders. If you're unlucky enough to have a pair nest over your car, you'll be pickin' bird bits outa your windshield wipers!

Got this pic off my bird feeder






Lee

pair of wood peckers liked the taste of my reloading building. Model 97 took care of them. The only birds I like are raptors. They kill their own food.

Though if the woodpeckers were liking your reloading building, that probably means there's things living in the wood of your reloading building that they like. Never a good thought..

Indeed. Maybe shoulda called the Orkin Man instead of Mr. Winchester.

I'm gonna open a roadside stand selling barbecued sparrow wings. Already got a fella down south who wants the gizzards.

Several years ago on the coldest day in January my wife asked if , "those are Blue Birds on the gutter?". Yes they were. So I did a search and found some Blue Birds do become resident, so I built boxes and put food out for them. The article I read said they will squeeze as many as they can in a box to stay warm. just before I took this pic I counted 8 squeeze in the box.

Sommer pic.

The only thing we get at our bird feeders are chickadees and black bears.

Had a rose breasted grosbeak visit our feeder a couple times this year. First time I've seen one in Nebraska in decades. Loggah has a few dozen that live at his house.

I think I've only seen 4. Two males came to my old logging truck feeder, and two males came to the suet feeder, and they only stayed 1 day each time. I've been sharing bird pics with an arborist site in the UK. Somehow I've lost 50 or 60 cool bird pics. One pic I really wanted to share, I had a Pileated, Downy, and Red Headed all in the same pic. I have giant suet feeders with a special mix for Pileated's, and regular suet feeders for every thing else. The Pileated was trying to hang off the little suet feeder, and the other two were on the big feeder.

No Canada Jays?

Yep, but I forgot about them. Technically all we really see now are Chickadees. Mainly because after the last bear incident where they tore all the window boxes off the house, we only put feeders out in the winter. Chickadees seem to be very cold hearty birds

You ever hear anybody call them "Whiskey Jacks"? That's what the old timers called them where I am from.

I grew up a little south and west of Damnesia. They were sure called Whiskey Jacks by the folks around there.

Now, out here in SoCal, we keep 4 hummingbird feeders going year around. Most of the birds never leave here. We do get the spring and fall migration birds too.

One good thing that came from the pandemic, my wife worked from home and started feeding the birds for entertainment. We have a huge verity of birds here. Evening grossbeaks are beautiful, rose breasted grossbeaks, cardinals, blue jays , morning doves, nuthatches, purple finches, gold finches, chickadees, we have some grackles but generally they thankfully stay away from the feeder. Large assortment of woodpeckers. Junco's. Tried to get the oriels to come in for her but no luck I see them occasionally and hear their song

Thankfully no birds of prey focusing here yet. We have em but must be enough other food to hunt?

Birds of prey might explain why I don't see many birds around here. Red tailed hawks practically live in the backyard because of the 193 squirrels that congregate there for the walnuts. That, and the fact I don't have a bird feeder. Oh, and I guess the sparrow BBQ thing.

My wife feeds the little ones. Don't know what they are. They crap all over everything.
I don't want to encourage raptors because we have a couple of stray cats that eat the chislers in the Summer. We feed them enough to keep them around. Wife gets mad at them when they catch one of the tweetie birds. One of the stray cats has gotten so big I doubt if a bald eagle could haul him off.

Cardinals, blue jays , morning doves, sparrows, purple finches, gold finches, chickadees, woodpeckers, Junco's, flickers, 5 crows. I feed sunflower seeds in the feeders and cracked corn on the ground.

I saw one of Joe's Woody The Woodpecker a couple of years ago. I had noticed something had been pecking some big holes in a couple of my trees. One afternoon out in the yard this huge red headed bird flew across the yard and landed in a tree. First and last time in 73 years that I seen one.

Tree rats, two fox and two grays... and a young Redtail hawk that keep an eye on the feeder area.

Those big Pileated Pecker Birds make a very distinctive sound flying. A lot of people think they only peck on dead trees. Wrong, they've riddled several of my healthy Oaks. They peck the holes, the tree bleeds, ants and other bugs come to the dripping sap. The #1 food of the Pileated is big black ants.

Mike, I had a Sharp Shinned hanging out ten feet above one of my feeders. It was a pretty bird. Was one of my favorite pics and I can't find that one.

Had a Cooper's hawk family nesting on our street for a few years. One of the young ones managed to fly into a tree, so the neighbors found a raptor rescue to take him until he healed up and then they released him back here. Got to watch them do a high speed flyby of my feeders a couple of times while snagging a sparrow or chickadee. Very impressive flying..

What a great picture!! What's the red prey? has the hawk already started to tear it up?

Jeff, that's rabbit inards. When I clean rabbits in the field I hang the parts that are not wanted in a tree so the beagles don't get it. They are usually gone in a couple of days so I put these in front of one of my trail cameras to see what was eating it.


Lee

Well, haven't seen this guy in the neighborhood ever before. But he likes the suet.. fortunately I got a couple good pictures. Red belly woodpecker, I believe.

You sure that isn't a red-headed white bellied woodpecker?

Yeah, sometimes you have to wonder at the IQ level of some of the folks who name bird species.

We've had a few double-breasted bed-thrashers through these parts, but it's been quite a spell since I've seen one up close and in person, although I hear they still reside in the area. Used to admire their photographs in magazines and wonder how some people seem to have no problem not only locating the beasts but getting such cooperation for stunning photography. I hear baiting with large houses and fat wallets works magically on this breed.

My one run in with one was indeed quite memorable, although short lived and ultimately unsatisfying. The courtship of this bird is a sight to behold, with plenty of flashing of breasts and dancing about followed by a swift departure of assets. These days, I may cast a glance their way if I were to see one, but I've found other more mundane avifauna to be somewhat less fowl.

One of our most common back yard birds are called Bush Tits....I call 'em free insecticide. They bomb into our native trees in an uncountable little gang and move around so fast that both of my cats, even the smart/deadly little princess, just stare at them in amazement, their evil little cat brains frozen with sensory overload! Coopers Hawks leave 'em alone, too.

Apparently in Europe there is an unrelated bird called a Great Tit, which is interesting because "tit" in whatever extinct language it comes from apparently means "small!" What's in a name? A lotta history and/or hooey, if it's a bird name....

Spent time outside this afternoon filling bird feeders. Buy individual seeds in 40-50 # bags as in the long run cheaper than buying the premixed stuff. Ground corn, white millet, black oil sunflower, saff-flower, thistle seed, toss in some shucked peanuts, mix and feed. Here in North Iowa winter, we see Cardinals, Blue Jays, Downy and red woodpeckers, English and house sparrows, wrens, Gold, House, and Purple Finches, Brown creepers, Nuthatches, Black capped Chickadees, Junco's, and probably a few others I can't think of right now. Blue birds, robins, hummingbirds, Indigo Buntings and a few others come in spring.

Have alot of bald eagles in the area anymore, 30-50 years ago they were a rare occurrence. Have plenty of Hoot owls and other varieties, along with Cooper and RedTailed Hawks. Tree rats!!!--Towns have alot of grey squirrels and reds. Don't see to many greys in country, but the PITA squirrels are the little true tree rats "Jack Squirrels. Real bird feeder thieves. Early spring before leaves 'leaf' and in fall when leaves start falling, my two 12 gauges get a workout using #8 trap loads. They'll overpopulate bad if ya let em, small and move too fast for a 22. Usually get around 20 or so in spring and equal number in fall. I'm in rural countryside, they don't go to waste. My barn cats love em.

I guess we are fortunate. We don't have any trees and therefore no "tree rats". We don't have any ground squirrel varmints thanks to our gigantic stray tomcat watermelon. We call him watermelon due to his markings and that in the Winter he gets so fat he has the shape of a watermelon.

Neighborhood bully has moved in.

Awesome looking hawk!

We have a Sharp Shinned Hawk guarding our bird feeders.

He's got to eat too. Can't hate him for that...

He can have all the sparrows and chickadees that he wants. But leave my goldfinches alone!!!!

My Dad had a pet Red Tailed Hawk that sat on the clothes line every day. It never dove on song birds. Actually, it never dove on anything. Dad hated Blue Jays and would shoot them off the feeder, out of the porch window. As soon as the Jay hit the ground, the Hawk would just plop down on the ground and waddle over and get it. I'm surprised the thing could fly it was so fat.

Here's a couple Thanksgiving dinners out the window of hunting camp. My wife got new bird seed, she wasn't happy with the visitors, I better go change it.

I don't think Redtails whack as many song birds as Cooper or Sharp Shinned Hawks.

Nope. Redtails go for slower, bigger game. The Coopers and Sharp Shinned are small bird chasers.

In some areas Redtails concentrate on "Euopean Rock Doves" (we call 'em pigeons and all sorts of other less printable things....). Redtails are good people.

Is that why one keeps dive bombing me?

No, Joe, it's because of gamey baseball cap you wear!

Rabbits, squirrels, mice and snakes seem to be high on the menu in these parts. Baby groundhogs seem to be a delicacy as well.

I stumbled onto a dead red-tailed hawk in the woods once. When I bent down to pluck a few feathers for fly tying (yeah I know that's illegal) I saw what killed it. It had choked to death on a green garter snake, which was dead too. Interesting scene.

Gary, I saw a hawk with a ginormous snake in it's talon's, for the birds size, on the farm where we shot the postal challenge a few years back. What ever happened to the possum?