Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Coffee Time #105. Wednesday’s Wanderings.
Good morning on this beautiful Wednesday! The coffee is ready everyone so sit back and relax as we listen to the birds this morning. It’s cold again, the temperature is 21F (-6C) but the air is still and the sun is shining with it’s brilliant golden rays adding warmth in it’s coloring of the landscape. The birds are alive out there this morning, literally hundreds of them, and they are eating away at my store of bird seed. I’m glad that I stocked up a bit, though I wasn’t quite expecting so many birds to visit. This cold weather has stopped the northward migration completely, birds are slowly making it this far then stopping until the warmer weather hits.
Tomorrow we are supposed to have a strong southwest wind and temps in the 60sF, or 17C. So I expect a lot of my present bird population will disappear tomorrow. However, that wind should also bring in a new batch of little birds with many different sparrows. So yesterday I was out for quite a while, nearly freezing my hands the one time, trying to get as many pics as I could of the fox sparrows which number between 20 and 30 right now, the most I have ever had at my feeders. Usually I figure it’s great to have 5 or 6 of them. So it has given me great opportunity to get some nice pics of them and I am showing two of them today.
You just might see more of them in the future! They are beautiful, large sparrows often mistaken for thrushes due to their size. And such beautiful color and patterns on these birds too. So they are definitely one of my favorites. They have a unique and odd but very musical song as well. At least I enjoy it anyway. And those juncos, wow, they are absolutely everywhere out there. Some people don’t think they are very pretty birds, just gray and white, but I think they are very pretty in their outfits, so neat, and when watching them up close they are not just gray and white, but some have a lot of brown, tan, and almost pink coloring.
Their bills are pink and they are just very cute and friendly. When I’m outside they don’t pay any attention to me really, hopping all around me, on my feet, landing on my shoulder. They are in the trees, everywhere on the ground, all over the deck, inside the boxes, on all the feeders. Then there is the robins singing from the tops of the trees, there are 6 herring gulls these days and 3 ring-billed gulls. Plus all my other regular birds. So it’s a busy place right now. Clouds are moving in and I see a few lazy snowflakes falling. I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve’s Bird Of The Day #58.
Hi everyone and here we are with today’s bird, the tiny “ruby-throated hummingbird”. We will have two posts with this bird, the male today, pictured above at my hummingbird feeder and the female tomorrow. The male and female spend very little time together so doing 2 posts seemed a good idea. This species of hummingbird is the only one that breeds in the eastern half of Canada and the US. Here in Canada it breeds much further west though than in the US going right to the Rocky Mountains. They winter in central America and return to Canada usually in May, in our area around mid May. Males return first and pick out a territory and they always return to the same place each year. They are amazing tiny birds about 3 to 3 3/4 inches (7.5 to 9cm) from the tip of it’s bill to it’s tail. The males throat patch can appear ruby red, orange or jet black depending on the light. They beat their wings about 55 to 75 times per second and can fly at top speed and suddenly stop then change direction in mid air. They can fly forwards, backwards, sideways, up and down and upside down. They don’t flap their wings up and down like other birds, but in a figure eight design, this helps give them uplift on both the down and up stroke of the wings. I have tried to capture this and show my efforts for both the male and female. It isn’t an easy thing to do! Once the pair have mated the male takes off on his own and doesn’t help with nest building or looking after the young.
Back tomorrow with more on this amazing bird. Have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
