Late on a cool, cloudy morning the front yard was active with small birds, and though there never seemed to be large numbers or a flock at any time, in no more than 20 minutes standing on the front porch, I saw or heard 21 different species.<\/p>\n
A Northern Mockingbird sat on the feeder when I first came out \u2013 probably trying to monopolize it. But it soon gave up and flew away, and Carolina Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, a Downy Woodpecker, a House Finch pair, a Brown-headed Nuthatch and a Carolina Wren all came and went. Two Dark-eyed Juncos, a White-throated Sparrow and three, four, five Mourning Doves searched for seeds under the feeder.<\/p>\n
A male Eastern Bluebird sat on top of the bluebird nest box \u2013 already looking possessive \u2013 up near the edge of the yard, and a female Bluebird hunted from low branches of nearby oaks, flying down frequently to pick up an insect or something. An Eastern Towhee called a rich chur-wheeee<\/em>, and an Eastern Phoebe whispered tsup, tsup<\/em>. Yellow-rumped Warblers flew from tree to tree, scattering check<\/em> calls. Two bright spots of red, Northern Cardinals, foraged on the ground under shrubs near the road, a Red-bellied Woodpecker chucked and called its spring-like quurrrr<\/em>, and a tiny Ruby-crowned Kinglet moved quickly and quietly through the branches of shrubs. Crows cawed in the distance, and several Canada Geese honked as they passed by.<\/p>\n A White-breasted Nuthatch \u2013 an infrequent visitor to our yard, though I often hear the call of one or two in the neighborhood \u2013 flew to the trunk of a pine, where I watched it spiral around, pause while upside down, and look up in its classic pose, showing off the sleek, sharp lines, the snow-white face and throat, black cap and blue-gray back.<\/p>\n But my favorite bird of the morning was a Hermit Thrush that flew in a flurry out of some bushes not far from the porch and into a Savannah holly tree beside where I stood, and perched there a minute or two, not far away, sitting very quietly among a tangle of branches and sparse leaves, maybe hoping to blend in. With soft-brown back and dark-spotted breast, it lifted its cinnamon tail and lowered it again, and watched me with a round dark eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Late on a cool, cloudy morning the front yard was active with small birds, and though there never seemed to be large numbers or a flock at any time, in no more than 20 minutes standing on the front porch, I saw or heard 21 different species. A Northern Mockingbird sat on the feeder when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1554,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}