Unexpected visitors

I see these birds a couple of times a year. They seem to travel in groups. I always manage to think that they're female cardinals, at least until I realize that they're smaller and that they have that tell-tale ;-) cadmium yellow color on the tip of their tails. Here are a couple of pics that I took of them this past week....


There's a bit of artifact at the right edge. It's not your monitor or your eyes. I didn't want to crop out those birds though.


This is a shot that I got of them on a cloudier day. Cedar waxwings are fun to spot. :-)

Ice Storm, Day 2

I wanted to post a few more photos of the ice from this storm. We didn't get much more last night, but it added enough to make me want to get out and take a few more pictures this morning.


Everything is covered by a layer of ice. That's a crepe myrtle in the background.



This is a photo of some of the last of the fruit on our crabapple tree.


I thought I should show the female cardinal since I've been posting pics of the males. She's pretty, too.


And this last one is a sparrow that was perched on our tanyosho pine.

Things are thawing out a little bit. We're just above freezing today. There's still another wave of ice due to come through the area tonight, but we've been fortunate so far.

Ice Storm, Day 1

This is supposed to be a weekend of ice for us here in the midwest. Last night was not too bad. The roads are okay and the ice is covering trees and bushes. It's pretty, but I can see some downed tree limbs and I'm sure that some folks have lost power again. We're fine here though, and I took a few pics of the birds that have been visiting the feeders today. The cardinals are always a nice splash of color this time of year.


This red-bellied woodpecker was also here to fill up on some sunflower seeds. It adds some nice color, too, even if it is a bully.


I guess we'll see what Mother Nature has in store for us later.

AHA!

A couple of weeks ago, we had very wintry weather. Now we're back to spring-like temps. It feels very strange to be out shopping for the holidays in only a light jacket. But on to my AHA! moment. When we had that very cold weather, I made sure to fill our bird feeders. We get lots of feathered visitors here: cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, juncos, titmice, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, finches, sparrows, blue jays... the list goes on and on. We get the occasional furry visitor, too, but it's the feathered ones that we're putting out seed for. Toward the end of last week, as the weather started to warm up a bit, my DH went out and refilled the feeders. We noticed that there wasn't much activity at all, despite all of the seed. That's not unusual. It happens. But it seemed like it was a prolonged period of time. Then we saw this visitor perched in our pin oak.

hawk

Oh, well, that explained things a bit. The smaller birds are always more scarce when the hawk comes around. It stuck around for a long time, too. Still, even after that the visits to the feeder seemed far fewer and much farther between. I caught sight of this visitor yesterday.

Cooper's hawk

This is a Cooper's hawk and it's a smaller hawk, but its colors are striking and those red eyes look so predatory. It's a good hunter and doesn't mind that neighborhoods and subdivisions have moved into its territory. It's adapted nicely and will stake out bird feeders. I hadn't even noticed that it had made a kill when I was snapping pics. It wasn't until I pulled my pics off the camera that I saw that it had hold of some unidentified bird. ACK! Does make it easier to understand why some of the other birds are avoiding our backyard for now, and I can't say that I blame them!

Winter has arrived

Earlier this week we'd been able to get out and do the last of the raking in T-shirts and shorts, enjoying the unseasonably warm temps in the low 70s here in Missouri. All of that changed yesterday. It started with rain in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday, which changed to freezing rain and sleet over the course of the day as the temps took a big plunge into the 20s. Yikes, what a shock to the system! We pulled the girls out of school a couple of hours early. We weren't the only ones. With predictions of more sleet with significant accumulations, followed by heavy snow later, schools and businesses were all letting out early. I don't think I've ever seen so much sleet that it covered the yard like it was snow. It was more like someone poured snow cone ice all over the place. Anyway, we were lucky here. The power stayed on and our trees aren't big enough to pose a real danger as far as the ice and wind causing them to snap off large limbs and branches. In fact, once the sun came out today, it was rather pretty with all of the ice glistening on the trees.

Here's a pic of my backyard before the girls got out there and played in it.

The birds were also active at the feeders. A couple of days ago after hearing the forecast, I'd filled all of the feeders that we have. Here's a female cardinal who was waiting her turn at the sunflower seeds.

I'll give the blue jay some equal time, though it tends to be a bully.

Looks like winter is finally here. Good thing, too. It was tough to get in the mood for the holidays when it was staying so warm.