Birds of the Garden

Earlier this year I tied up one of my sunflowers with yarn to try to straighten it up a bit. While I was in the garden a chickadee came by. It was probably just trying to get nesting material, but it really looked more like
"Oh, no, someone tied you up! I'll free you from captivity, Mrs Sunflower!"
I wished I'd had my camera, it was adorable. I freed the sunflower after the bird left, I was a little afraid it would damage the stalk with how enthusiastically it was going after the yarn.

Last year a hummingbird came by the garden and I asked what I was growing for them. Next year, I promised.
So as promised, this year I planted cardinal flowers and Penstemon, and the sunset hyssop and columbine I planted last year bloomed. (The cardinal climber didn't work out - not enough attention to the seedlings on my part.)
What do the hummingbirds like after my efforts? The volunteer jewelweed that so politely planted itself 1 per square that I left it, and... ?my pole beans? Wasn't expecting that. Photo of the hummer resting in a tree and a blur feeding on the pole bean flowers:

We just bought a trumpet vine for our hummers, but we won't know if they like it until next year. They also go after our butterfly plants -- milkweed, etc.

Cute photos!

CN, Something my hummingbirds love is Mexican Sage. It does get big and spread out (fall over) but both bees and the birds love it. Buy one plant and you can divide every couple years forever.

I just opened my front door to evict a lost beetle and was shocked to suddenly have a male red-throated hummer 2 ft from me, sipping at some bolted arugula (wild-type, Diplotaxis sp) flowers I was neglecting growing in a 5-gallon bucket on the porch. Beautiful - but... Arugula? Really?? I plant all these nice flowers just for you guys, and I find out you would have been happy if i just planted more cheap, easy-to-germinate arugula?    
Aye, aye hummers. I... I'll make a note of that for next year.

Isn't that just the way?  Bolted arugula!  Interesting!  Mine also love the lantana in my containers on the patio.  And old fashioned red hollyhocks.  I have never seen them on my beans....but mine have purple flowers too...

@Scorpio Rising wrote:Isn't that just the way?  Bolted arugula!  Interesting!  Mine also love the lantana in my containers on the patio.  And old fashioned red hollyhocks.  I have never seen them on my beans....but mine have purple flowers too...

Butterflies love lantana, too. It's one of their faves.

Had 5 of these little hummers hovering around the feeder.  Could only get two to sit still long enough.  Other photo is a cute wing wave.

That bottom shot with the wings up is a real winner! 

So cute!  I have my hummingbird feeder right next to my sunflower feeder....it has been fun watching them cavorting about and getting to know the other birds!  I need to get my camera out here, because the goldfinches have been fun also.

Saw this on Facebook this morning. https://www.facebook.com/amazingbirdstuff/videos/1258370674284695/

We have been getting a number of Goldfinches at our bird feeder. For the past couple of days they are doing something I have never seen before. Some of them fly up to the windows on the second floor of our house and try to break in. You can hear them flapping their wings against the glass and/or pecking at the glass. They do not do this on the main floor windows. I checked on the Internet and others have witnessed this activity. It may be a territorial thing and they attacking their own reflections in the glass.

@trolleydriver wrote:We have been getting a number of Goldfinches at our bird feeder. For the past couple of days they are doing something I have never seen before. Some of them fly up to the windows on the second floor of our house and try to break in. You can hear them flapping their wings against the glass and/or pecking at the glass. They do not do this on the main floor windows. I checked on the Internet and others have witnessed this activity. It may be a territorial thing and they attacking their own reflections in the glass.

Here is a photo of one of the birds at the window.

Interesting!  I have seen cardinals do that in car mirrors.  

Still no hummingbirds here, but have grosbeaks, and the usual with the annoying and bully-ish addition of the starlings and grackles....

But today, as I had my son out cutting some deadwood from my old crabapple, I glanced up and saw a mommy Mourning Dove on nest!  She was calm, despite the fact we were sawing limbs off the tree....we decided to wait on a couple other branches until the kids get fledged!

TrollyD
I had a mockingbird attack one of my basement windows. Covered the outside with cardboard to remove the reflection.  Then noticed I had to wash small bloodspots off the window. Poor bird was going crazy fighting itself.

@sanderson wrote:Saw this on Facebook this morning.  https://www.facebook.com/amazingbirdstuff/videos/1258370674284695/

That is wonderful for someone to go through the trouble to make hummers happy.  Wild Birds Unlimited use to sell a water mister that attaches to the birdbath.  The hummers seemed to be afraid of it and didn't use it.

@llama momma wrote:

@sanderson wrote:Saw this on Facebook this morning.  https://www.facebook.com/amazingbirdstuff/videos/1258370674284695/

That is wonderful for someone to go through the trouble to make hummers happy.  Wild Birds Unlimited use to sell a water mister that attaches to the birdbath.  The hummers seemed to be afraid of it and didn't use it.

Interesting!  They are so cute....

I saw my first ruby-throated today!!!!!  Pretty late.  But they are here!  

There have been robins nesting under the deck since before I started renting the house. We may have gotten off to a bad start since I arrived in the middle of nesting season and scared the robin off the nest at night by taking the deck stairs into the house at night... more than once. Putting my garden (and thus me) adjacent to the deck didn't really help our relationship.

But now, years later, at least one of the robins, I think it's the female, finally believes I might not be trying to eat them. (I talk to them, and it's my running joke when they yell at me, and I say back: "Knock it off! How many times have I actually eaten you?")

The robin asked me to move while I was adding the composted horse manure to by beds because she saw I worm I'd dug up. I obliged, walked out of the garden a several feet, and she grabbed the worm.

Next I set aside what I think was a cutworm moth pupa, and she snagged it while I was just a little ways outside the garden, on the other side of the fence from her, refilling my smaller bucket with another batch of manure. There was a hiatus while the grackles noisily dealt with a crow in the neighbor's sickly maple, and she stayed away. Meanwhile, I found, one by one, nearly a dozen wire worms and set them aside in a plant tray (pressed down in to the MM so it wouldn't flip if she landed on the rim). She came back to the garden, beak already full, and managed to stuff all but one those wire worms in her beak! She fed the babies, and came back for the one last wire worm and was only four feet from me. That's the closest she's ever gotten without one or the other of us doing so by accident and startling each-other.   Happy robins! Fewer garden pests!

The babies were further along than I'd thought and "jumped ship" during a two days of wind and rain that I wasn't out in the garden.

Usually they end up near by, but a few days passed without seeing any of them and I worried a cat had gotten them. Then, a few days later, after running off the cat, I found one struggling in my garden fence. It's the first time I've had a bird in the fence; based on the timing, I think the cat scared it in. I covered the bird's eyes with one hand to calm it and moved the bird around so that a friend could carefully cut my fence away. Once freed the bird ran across the garden and, still understandably stressed, started trying to fly through the fence on the other side of the garden. After it bounced a few times, I walked over, picked it up, and placed it on the other side of the fence. It immediately took flight up into the elm tree.

About a week after that, I spotted all three fledglings on the ground near the elm. Here's one with ?mom:


I wonder if the robins will have another brood in the same nest this year - at least one year they raised two broods.

I love robins!  Great story and pics!  Funny, this morning, I was taking the recycles out, and I had come back after another trip and I hear this distressed peep!  There, amidst the cardboard, was a baby robin!  

So I tipped the box over so it could get out, it was breathing hard, scared!  But it seemed to hop away and a bit of flight interspersed with the hopping!  

Mowed tonight, no evidence of bad deeds...

Robins should definitely be reused rather than recycled!

Robins have set up a nest in the cedar hedge behind one of my compost bins. Every time I work in the garden they are out there looking for worms. 

Just saw my first hummingbird of the year as I was looking out from a second floor window.  Seemed like it was looking back at me for a few seconds.

Photos of our garden robin at the wood chip pile with a worm, in the area just covered with cardboard and wood chips near the new SFG box, and on the cedar hedge.

I've started getting small sparrows visiting my terrace garden. I have a feeder hanging in one corner but not sure if they've found it yet. I did find some bird poop on one of my lawn chairs, though. :-p

As far as stories go, before we moved to our new place, we had a pine tree in front of our old condo where we were on the ground floor. We had mourning doves nesting in that tree for 3 consecutive years. I've go pictures ok my laptop somewhere, will look for them.

Also at that the place, I was working on my couch and saw something out of the corner of my eye outside. A bird was chasing a dragonfly, and the dragonfly made a sharp turn right up against the glass of our patio window and the bird couldn't turn fast enough and ended up making slight contact with the glass before continuing the chase. I saw it chasing the dragonfly for another few seconds after that before they disappeared from my field of view. It was pretty crazy!