snow birds

Ryan's here for the weekend. It's a rare weekend for both of us to not have anything at school that requires us to be there. Nikie invited us over for Sabbath lunch and Chadd's parents came too. This picture is us after lunch eating dessert in the living room.

Chadd and John (his dad) love birding and Chadd has a ton of feeders in their back yard, so there are always a lot of birds back there. Because we woke up with snow on the ground and it continued to snow ALL day, the birds were extra hungry. I had fun taking pictures of them on the feeders and deck.

I'm not even sure how many downy woodpeckers we saw back there. I know there were three different ones all in the same area when I looked one time. There were hairy woodpeckers out there too. Watching all of these birds was nice, but the starlings came too. They were eating the seed on the railing, out of the feeders, and even figured out the wood block with suet plugs in it. It makes you want to shoot them all!


Chadd had put seed all along the railing on the deck and lots of birds liked eating off of there. This is a male junco. I also saw a Carolina wren out under the bench.

This red-bellied woodpecker didn't appreciate the starling invasion. She fought them off pretty well for a while.



I think Cardinals are the prettiest birds in snow. Even when they were up in the trees, they stood out really well.





The goldfinches have been around all winter, but this week we've noticed that a lot more of them are at the feeders. You can see that these are starting to get their yellow coloring back.



Have you ever seen a feeder like this? If you want to show preferential treatment to your goldfinches, get one. It is a thistle seed feeder that requires the finches to hang upside down and feed from holes that are under the perches. Other birds aren't smart enough to figure them out.


This fat bird made me just want to squeeze it! Tanya must have rubbed off on me.



And for my last bird . . . a tufted titmouse. I'm still trying to get a picture of one of these that I really like. They don't stay around long to be photographed, unfortunately.





We woke up today with sunny skies, so I ran outside in my pjs and took a quick picture of the snow before it melts. Blue skies are the promise of warmer weather tomorrow!