Blog de Puree

It’s day one of the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) and by 7:30 a.m. we had four bird species visit our feeders. And one pesky squirrel who approached our feeders with impunity. It was quickly shooed away. The rest of the day produced some more local species and a boat-load, or feeder-load, of squirrels.

This is our second year participating and to be honest, at the risk of mild amusement by others who never knew this side of me, I’m excited as we now have feeders that are well established in local avian traffic patters. This means that we should see a wider variety of birds come through this year.

Here’s a breakdown of what we saw today.

• Mourning Dove – 2
• Blue Jay – 4
• American Crow – 1
• European Starling – 9
• Dark-eyed Junco – 7
• House Sparrow – 3

It’s interesting to note that we’ve had a Northern Goshawk terrorizing the local bird population in the last few months, and it seems to have a craving for House Sparrows. From time to time, we would see it stalk and attack them by some of our neighbor’s feeders and bushes. While you do feel for the little sparrows, it’s nice to seem them knocked down a peg or two as they used to roam around here in large quarrels—one of the official term for a large number of sparrows—that were quite intimidating to other birds. And the Goshawk is truly a magnificent bird to watch.