Now what kind of bird is that?

I often struggle to identify the birds in my backyard.  I know the usual suspects of course - my normal backyard visitors but when someone new comes along ....  So today when these large robin sized bird that clearly were not robins and not cedar waxwings and not kingbirds arrived in my berry tree for lunch at lunch time I started another round of frustrating attempts at identifying these odd characters.  This time I turned to technology for help:

A website that I find quite helpful is www.whatbird.com but specifically I like the step by step identifier on the site, which allows you to narrow down the possible bird type by using your location, it's size, colour, beak shape etc.  This allows use to use as many clues as you have at your disposal to identify the bird and hopefully saves you from the embarrassment of mistakenly identifying the bird as an unusual, rare, unlikely bird that never frequents your area as the bird in your backyard -trust me I have done this.  So anyways today I used this tool and determined I had Pine Grosbeaks (immature male or female grosbeaks to match the colour of birds) in my tree.

Now I really don't know if these were truly Pine Grosbeaks and based on the range map it would be kind of unusual to have them in my area.  However it was the best thing I could come up with after an hour of research.  As I never got organized enough to capture these birds on film, I can not get a second opinion on my identification but isn't that half the fun of bird watching - just trying to figure out who is coming to dinner?

New Year's Resolution - Fill the feeder more often with different seeds.

You have heard about the shoemaker's kids that don't have any shoes, well how about the Bird Seed Manufacturer's birds that don't have any bird seed?  It just seems that my days and evenings are so full that I don't get out in the yard much to top up those feeders.  So my 2012 resolution is to actually fill the bird feeders more.

After coming home from visiting relatives over Christmas, I found the feeders in my backyard empty as usual and went out to put new food in the feeders.  Of course as a bird seed manufacturer, we end up with the odds & ends from the bird seed operations, seed samples from this vendor and of this product or another that I end up dragging home.  So for the fun of it, I filled my feeders with different products and spent the afternoon doing backyard feeder observation.

Of course with our Mother Nature's bird feeding system, we recommend this.  Ideally you want to separate the birds in the yard to avoid conflict between them and to encourage the maximum diversity of birds in your backyard.  I sometimes forget to do this myself though and watching the birds eat that afternoon just reinforced how important this is. 

I had put tree nuts in my peanut feeder.  Tree nuts included almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts, pistachio, hazelnuts, pecans etc.  In fact most nuts with the exception of peanuts are a "tree nut" and we use tree nuts in some of our more exotic mixes.  However, I do not typically feed pure nuts and if I do, I would usually use peanuts.  Well I was so impressed with the birds reaction to the tree nuts.  The nuthatches and downy woodpeckers in my yard were head over heals for the tree nuts.  Meanwhile the finches definitely preferred the sunflower or nyjer seed while the juncos and doves were hanging out underneath and around the millet feeders.

Lesson reinforced:  Different food for different birds.  Diversity is the spice of life so mix it up this year at your bird feeders - oh and try to keep them full too!