Birds Seen In Mom and Dad's Backyard

I'm visiting my Mom and Dad on the eastern shore of Lake Huron for a couple of weeks so I'm not in my usual kitchen window location looking out for new species in my own backyard. But they also have bird feeders and I'll list a couple of their backyard species that don't visit my West Coast neighbourhood.

This morning we had a solitary male Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), brilliant red with a black mask and looking fat with puffed up feathers against the cold. He perches at the side of the feeder, looking watchfully around as he uses his powerful-looking beak to break apart the sunflower seed hulls.

Sitting on top of the feeder's roof, also with puffed-up feathers is a Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) patiently waiting for his turn. The Dove is large enough to make perching on the narrow bench a trick that requires some practice. This one has obviously had many opportunities to perfect the art of squeezing his bulk into the cramped space against the slanted side of the feeder.

www.ebird.org is a website developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society where you can submit and track your own bird sightings anywhere in North America. You can keep track of your sightings in multiple locations over time and create reports. It's an easy way to contribute to research into North American bird populations and migration. The website also lets you access its sightings database and you can plot species statistics on a map.

That's it for today's blog entry. Mom and Dad's PC keyboard is very different (ergonomically shaped with much larger key caps) from my own and typing becomes an exercise in frustration what with fixing all the typos and having to close that irritating "My Computer" window that pops up every time I miss the too short space bar.