15 February 08
Northern Flicker, Red-shafted
This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count; please consider spending 15 minutes (or much longer!) counting birds in your local patch and submitting them to the compilers. It’s easy. You can do several counts over the weekend and submit them all.
I decided to keep a running count of what caught my eye outside my window at work this morning. Best birds by far were five American pipits which I have never seen at work before; now on the “birds at work” list. Sent in the list. Easy as pie.
Previous: Short-eared Owl Next: White-throated Swift
I submitted one rather thin checklist from this morning. It has been so cold and snowy here all I saw were house sparrows and cardinals!
It’s a fun program though. I think this is my third year.
What a coincidence! When we started doing the count yesterday (the 15th), one of the birds we saw was the yellow-shafted flicker! It almost never comes to our feeders (and is only occasionally seen poking about on the ground in our backyard), but there it was hesitantly, then confidently, approach and feast at our suet feeder. It was definitely our special GBBC bird. It came again today.
We saw a fox sparrow in our yard last week, another rarity, but haven’t seen it again since, unfortunately, so can’t count it.