Happy 2024. We’ve had some cold-for-Arizona days and nights with rain. Then it cleared up for a few days but tomorrow we are heading back into a few more days of rain and cooler temps. So I’ve really not been anywhere much but the yard…and finally a few migratory birds showed up but they haven’t really stuck around long. I don’t know why they haven’t stayed longer, there is plenty of food for one and all.
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Yellow-rumped Warbler, male
Orange-crowned Warbler
White-crowned Sparrow (this is an immature one but there were adults, too)
The young Cooper’s Hawk is often closeby:
You don’t want him looking at you that way!
My old standbys are around, of course:
House Sparrow, male
Northern Mockingbird
Curve-billed Thrasher
Gilded Flicker, female
But it’s a good thing that I have kitties around to amuse me and take photos of. Ferguson is the most cooperative of the bunch so here he is amusing me in various ways:
Prepping for Valentine’s Day
Getting ready to go birdwatching with me
Proving that he really is El Gato Supremo, trying to be their spokescat
Playing with his educational Christmas toy
And these 2:
Torti and Bouche whiling away a rainy day
Representing the outdoor cats in this post is Sadly, a sweet semi-feral boy with dreamy seafoam green eyes:
So I hope your 2024 is going well for all of you and that we all have a fun, glorious year ahead!
That terrribly cute bird with the punk rock hair is a Ladder-backed Woodpecker who has been visiting my yard a few times lately. I sure wish he would become a regular but he is very skittish and flies away at the slightest disturbance from the other birds.
However, he never showed up during the Great Backyard Bird Count when I was out in the yard. Every February, for 4 days, the Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology have this citizen science project where you count species and numbers of each and report them to ebird.com. You can do it anywhere, not just your yard, and you can do it as many times as you want. I actually did it 4 times, all in my yard, twice alone, and twice with my birding friend, Karen. On the last day, Karen and I saw 20 different species in my yard in 2 hours. There were even 110 House Sparrows at one time!
Here are some of the birds that were seen during this event:
American Robin
Northern Mockingbird
Yellow-rumped Warbler
European Starling
Curve-billed Thrasher
Rosy-faced Lovebird
White-crowned Sparrow
Gila Woodpecker
Cooper’s Hawk
Anna’s Hummingbird
American Kestrel
Lesser Goldfinch
We had a great time and I’ve added some different foods to lure more birds into the yard so I hope I get even more variety in the future. I keep a yard bird list and I’m up to 55 species that have visited my yard. Some of them were only one hit wonders but it’s always exciting to get some different ones.
A Yellow-rumped Warbler, White-crowned Sparrow, Orange-crowned Warbler, and another Yellow-rumped Warbler were residing in a backyard in Chandler, AZ, to which I was invited. A woman in my Facebook birding group has a rare (for here) bird that has been in her yard for about 3 months now and she asked me if that would be a Lifer for me (a bird I had never seen before). I said yes and she invited me over to try to see it.
She has a gorgeous yard, complete with a 30 foot stream, a retention pond, tons of native trees and plants, various posing props, etc., so I was able to get some lovely shots. My husband came with me and this is who greeted us out front:
None other than a Greater Roadrunner! I figured that was a good sign that it was going to be a fun experience. So…I got my Lifer bird, a Gray Catbird! We don’t have those here normally. They are related to Mockingbirds and Thrashers and we definitely have those. Anyway, he was a little shy and gave me a few short looks but enough to get some photos:
Handsome little guy. I have some other shots but they all have feeders in them, not my favorite look but still glad to have them. I have some other photos from her yard that I haven’t even edited yet so they may pop up later. Everything looks great in her yard. She knows how to set up a bird paradise.
I have another birding friend who I have gone several places with in the past. Unfortunately, she is moving out of state in March. She and I did the Great Backyard Bird Count (February 17-20) in my backyard a couple times this past week and I will post those photos very soon but, meanwhile, she brought me this cute feeder that she doesn’t want to take with her. The first day I put it out, two Northern Mockingbirds and two Abert’s Towhees were very interested but cautious of something new. One of the Northern Mockingbirds got his nerve up and posed for me briefly before grabbing a peanut. I think the others will get braver and I’ll be able to get some cute shots of them by, in, or on it soon:
It’s been a cold January in Phoenix…not as cold as the midwestern or eastern parts of the U.S. but consistently colder than usual, day after day. I was excited to see this Orange-crowned Warbler in our yard and thought maybe it was the one that wintered with me for several years, excluding last winter, but now I’m not so sure. She seems to have moved on after a couple weeks of eating jelly and oranges. I’m hoping she returns…such a cute little thing. Maybe she was too cold and headed south.
I make sure the food is out everyday so they can keep fueled. Here are a few more January visitors: a White-crowned Sparrow digging up some dirt, Verdin, Anna’s Hummingbirds, a Rosy-faced Lovebird, Northern Mockingbird looking for peanuts, and A Curve-billed Thrasher showing off. I also have 2 Yellow-rumped Warblers in the yard but they are very skittish and my photos are not good…hoping to get them soon.
I actually went to a couple places looking for birds but I don’t want to bore you with too many shots so I may make a catch-up post in a few days and show you some of those.
For now, here is a shot of the moon last night, January 30. I’m hoping to see the green comet in the next few days but I don’t have the sort of equipment to get a good photo of it. Somewhere around the Little Dipper…
I started this blog on February 13, 2009…so 13 years of blogging…but it has gotten sparser and sparser as the years have gone by. Initially, I posted almost daily, then down to 3 times a week, then weekly, then a couple times a month and now I try to do it at least monthly. I know people don’t read blogs as often anymore and there is other social media that is more immediate but I do it sort of for myself, too, so I can look back and remember what was going on at a certain time in my life. But I do thank anyone who still reads this. So here is a jumble of photos I’ve taken since my last post. More birds~House Sparrow female, White-crowned Sparrow, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Curve-billed Thrasher, Rosy-faced Lovebird, Gila Woodpecker male, House Finch male, Anna’s Hummingbird male.
And cats…these are the indoor cats…Ferguson, the most cooperative, Torti, the least cooperative, and Bouche, who still can’t totally let go of the outdoor life. He’s a dasher. There are several outdoor kitties, too.
Glenrosa Journeys 