Yesterday I made my annual trek to the Burroughs Audubon Library at Lake Jacomo in Blue Springs, Missouri for their annual Great Backyard Bird Count Event. They have a lovely feeder setup with all the trimmings for their feathered friends. They offer: black oil sunflower, safflower, suet, fine sunflower chips, nyjer, peanuts, and scatter white proso millet. What more could a bird want?
The GBBC is a great way to be a citizen scientist for the day and the count creates a snapshot of the where birds are in the country over one weekend. It is easy to do in your own yard but there are a lot of events that you can go to as well. At the events people can learn how to count in their own yards or even what birds that they are seeing but might not know what they are. Burroughs Audubon invites anyone to come out for a spell to help with the count. It is always fun to meet different people and to help them learn the joys of backyard bird feeding and to stretch their knowledge a little more.
This year's count was no disappointment with great sightings including Harris Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Purple Finch, Rusty Blackbird, and a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. At one point we even had a well planned out sparrow flash mob scratching at the ground. Another fun thing this year was finding birds with bands on their legs. A couple weeks ago a couple researchers banded some of the birds around the library. So every once in a while you would find a Dark-eyed Junco with a blue band or a Downy Woodpecker with a red band. It will be interesting to see if we locate some of the same birds next year!
If you want to do your own GBBC it goes through Feb. 21st. For information go to http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/
Good Birding!
Northern Cardinal, White-throated Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco
A Blue Jay Eating aSunflower
A Group Of Northern Cardinals
Harris Sparrow
Male Purple Finch
Nic,
ReplyDeleteHappy to see your blog up and going. I think this will be very helpful to me. I am really the novice. I think I have several of the Purple Finches living here. They are in my trees and at the feeder daily and have been for several years. I have another small black bird that showed up recently. I think his beak is light colored. but it's very sleek and his wing feathers have the smallest rim of white and a white chest. He isn't a junco, I have bunches of them. I can't seem to find him in any of my books. I now have two sets of Northern Flickers (male and female). They eat a lot!! My husband just recently bought me a Nikon P100 with 26X zoom to take pictures of the birds and of course Emily and James. I have some pictures now........just have to figure out how to transfer to my computer. I have been trying to catch a pic of a brown creeper (I think) he is sooo cute but very nervous. Anyway - how exciting and it sounds like you have been really busy. Great picture of you. You look like you were in your element. Pam
Thanks for your post back. Let me know if you need help with the camera. It also sounds like you are getting a lot of great birds! As you learn each species you will start to notice how many different birds travel through our yards. Last year I had 82 different species in or flying over the yard. As far as your unidentified bird goes you might look at a Yellow-rumped Warbler. They are very streamlined and fit the color description. Let me know if you have anymore questions.
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