It is going to be warmer here in central Illinois for about a week to 10 days. This is a good time for Cleon and me to thoroughly clean each feeder every few days. The birds had just about emptied the safflower feeder – House Finches love these seeds here in our backyard. Cleon and […]
If you have been watching our live-stream camera over the last few weeks you will have noticed that on most days, it is standing-room-only at the feeders. That is because it has been so bitterly cold. When you are watching the live-stream, there is weather information on the top left corner of your screen for […]
Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers are the big suet eaters at our feeders. And they relish the suet I make that is in the log feeder my father made for me so many years ago. (The recipe for this suet is under Bird Feeders and Bird Baths in this website’s menu.) We also have a wire […]
Snow Geese are migrating and you might see and hear flocks overhead for at least another week. Out here in the midwest, they land to forage in our huge, harvested agricultural fields and to rest on our lakes. We do not often have them here on our small lake, but we do have them on […]
Avian flu is nationwide and this is the time of year when it is at its most deadly. One way this disease is spread is through wild geese and ducks who can be carriers of the disease and from the end of January through mid April is when they are migrating. It is spread by […]
Cleon’s cousin Rick Radis sent me a text a few days ago to tell me a Ross’s Gull – a quite rare visitor to our lower 48 states – was sighted in Kansas. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of this gull – please check your field guide or allaboutbirds.org. Look at the range […]
Here they are! Cleon took this photo of them last year about this same time. Be sure to watch the video I just shot this morning – go to this website’s menu and click on Videos. And turn up your volume!
The Snow Geese are now flying in huge flocks high over our house – all leisurely heading north to their nesting grounds on the tundra of northern Canada. And our Canada Geese are beginning what Cleon and I have named “The Great Goose Wars”. Each late winter, the large flocks of Canada Geese – which […]
We had a frigid January where we had close to three weeks of night-time temperatures in minus digits, day-time temperatures in single digits, and winds anywhere from 20-30 mph all day and all night. This morning it is sunny, the temperature will be in the 50’s, there is a very light breeze, and a Carolina […]
You may have seen the platform feeder filled with small brown sparrows during the last few weeks when the weather was so cold. And at first glance, you may have thought they were House Sparrows – but they are not. We used to have a large flock of House Sparrows living here, but we have […]