Category Archives: Goldfinch

The Summer of ’24

butterfly, flowers, gardening, Goldfinch, goldfinches, Hummingbird, morning glory flower, Nature, New England, rosebreasted grosbeak, summer, sunflower, Tiger Swallowtail, , , , , , , , ,
Well, you might not know it from this week’s temperature, but summer should be moving into autumn now that it’s September.  So, perhaps my late developing pumpkins and veggies may come to full bloom after all.  Earlier in the season, we did dine deliciously a couple of times on our own eggplants.  And there are more growing! We also have had a few meals flavored by our home grown peppers.  Here’s a shot of one harvest.  Don’t you just love the deliciously spicy and fresh smell when you slice open a  garden pepper?

We haven’t had such good luck with our tomatoes and pumpkins this year – although  we did get a few fresh tomatoes for Yang to add to his omelettes and stir fries.  The beans are just now coming into form.  We had one serving earlier, and we’re planing on harvesting some of these beauties soon.

 

I’m also hoping that though these pumpkin and gourd embryos are late comers, they may still grow and ripen with the hot autumn we’ve been having.

 

We didn’t have the best of luck with our sunflowers, as some form of insect (we think beetles) brutalized the plants grown from seeds planted directly into the garden.  However, after a daily spraying of tabasco sauce in water to drive off the insects, most of the sunflowers recovered.  Some even grew  up to full height and even better than the ones we’d protected by growing them as seedlings in cups before planting.

 

 

The Morning Glories had been growing full throttle, vines creeping up the trellis, until chipmunks tunneled out of the wood retaining wall on which the flower’s boxes were located and munched them silly.  It’s a jungle out there! Again, tabasco spritzing did its job and some managed to recover and grow.  I especially like the orchid colored ones.

Did you notice the  two-toned orchid and purple one?  Those hybrids pop up every year.  If you look at the seeds, they are even half black (purple flower) and half cream-colored (orchid flower).  I save the seeds every year and replant, so I sometimes even get pink instead of orchid.  I guess that’s the orchid and magenta hybrid.

 

We’ve had interesting fauna as well as flora this year.  First, let me introduce you to Bunzie.  A very young and small rabbit showed up at the beginning of the summer.  He has since grown!  Best of all, he seems to  eat only clover and grass – well he did devour much of a dying petunia.  However, that petunia regrouped and has a lovely deep pink flower now.  So, I guess he was just dead heading for me.  He’s actually not too afraid of Yang and me, but we don’t bother him, either.  One night, he triggered the motion-detector light outside the sun porch and we got to watch him dash hither and yon while two skunks patiently waddled about that stretch of yard looking for grubs.

I only saw one Monarch Butterfly this year, yesterday.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me – and I scared Bunzie when I rushed over to the butterfly bush to see it.  We have had at least two regular visitors to the butterfly bushes, these Tiger Swallowtails.  I love how you can see the same yellow and black patterns on the insect’s body that you can see on his wings.  I was so surprised that these guys let me get close enough to watch and take these pictures.  They also love to dine on the nectar of flox and Rose of Sharon flowers.

Another critter who loves butterfly bushes, flox, and Rose of Sharon would be the Hummingbird – or birds.  We had at least two, though usually only one showed up at a time.  When there were two, feathers flew, so to speak.  Yang got some great shots.  It’s fun to watch him , the bird not Yang, come in for a landing, wings a-whirl!  I’m sure that you can understand why the pictures are a little blurry!  Once he/she landed, the little guy enjoyed our nectar – as well as taking sips from all the flowers.

Sometimes, he just liked to sit majestically atop the feeder and survey his domain.  Other times he enjoyed parking his tuffett on the structure on which the Morning Glories grew – he thought they were tasty, too.  If you’re wondering what that contraption is atop the feeder, it’s a moat that Yang created to keep ants from climbing down into the feeder.  Yang saw some designs for sale on line, figured he could make one for much cheaper – and did it!

Sometimes the Hummer just stared at our window with a “Who you lookin’ at?” attitude.

Of course, we also had some of the other usual suspects this summer.  The Goldfinches pretty much dominated the two globe feeders, though the Redbellied Woodpecker wasn’t above shooting his long tongue through the bars to steal some sunflower hearts.

The Rosebreasted Grosbeaks were back as well.  I saw as many as three males at once one time!  I also saw the females and some juvenile males as well.  Unfortunately, though we kept putting out oranges, we only saw an Oriole here twice.  My neighbor said he saw the Oriole quite a bit, though on the feeder.

 

 

One visitor to the feeders who was rather unique for the summer was this chap.

Now how often do you see a Slate Colored Junco in new England in the middle of July?  He stayed around well into August, then I haven’t seen him since.  Someone got his GPS all fowled (ahem) up!  Now, will he be back this autumn?  Stay tuned!

November December Flora and Feathered Fauna

Autumn, birds, cardinal bird, chickadee, Downy Woodpecker, Goldfinch, goldfinches, Hairy Woodpecker, massachusetts, New England, nuthatch, , , , , , , , , , ,
Even as November eased into December, Yang and I have still enjoyed the creatures and plantation around the Yang Manse.  Would you believe that we still had morning glories toward the middle of November?  Gallantly battling colder, shorter, darker days, these Heavenly Blues waited until the last gasps of autumn to bloom.  Their beauty shown through the dying colors of the late season. They even provided a lovely contrast to the last of autumn’s orange and rust foliage.

Though we had an extremely poor crop of pumpkins and gourds (three fertilized, two surviving long enough to be picked), we did still manage to grow some of the plants to maturity.  Here, is one gourd that started out lovely, but succumbed to cold, too much dampness, and the onslaught of slugs.  You can see how pretty it was before Mother nature went wild on it.

 

In a happier vein, though, how about a look at the survivors?  This gourd that did make it was a surprise fertilization, which we found peeping under some leaves.  Here it is shortly after discovery.  We try to put a rock or plate under the growing gourds and pumpkins to keep the damp ground from rotting them.

 

 

And here is the same gourd all grown up.  Sadly, because it was fertilized, late it never grew very much and then spoiled after only about six weeks.  It was pretty while it lasted!

 

 

We also managed to get one pumpkin!  It was fertilized during a short break in the rain for a week or so of sunshine and hot weather.  Here’s our pumpkin a beautiful dark green as it grows slowly but surely, out facing damp and ravenous slugs!

 

 

It may not be the biggest pumpkin we’ve ever grown, but like Reba Mcentire, it can sing, “I’m a survivor” – if pumpkins can sing. Now the pumpkin resides in state in the picture window on the sun porch, where we can enjoy viewing it as we watch the birds chowing down at our feeders.

 

And speaking of birds chowing down on our feeders, we’ve got plenty of the little feathered guys to watch!  We have the usual suspects: Mourning Doves, Blue Jays, Cardinals,  Chickadees, Red Bellied Woodpeckers, Titmice, Downy Woodpeckers, and Nuthatches, for example.

 

 

But there are also returning old friends, as well.  The harbingers of winter, the Slate Colored Juncos, are back.  At first, they did their typical feeding off the ground, but now they are returning to old habits of taking lunch at the feeding bar.  It just takes them a little while to remember that they can do that. I love to see them flying away, making the sound of castanets and flashing the white stripes on the fan of their tails.

 

Who else should make a return engagement after a short absence, but the Goldfinches!  As summer ended, these guys disappeared from my feeders for several weeks.  Then, suddenly, they all returned in November, wearing their olive winter coats. They also like to chow down with the other birds, so I have some neat shots of them with their pals, though woe betide the bird who tries to chase one of these aggressive little olive-garbed guys away!  I love this picture with two Goldfinches and a Titmouse (on the right)doing acrobatics.

Here’s another one of the Goldfinch with a Nuthatch.  Isn’t the Nuthatch in picture #1 adorable, just peeking around the corner of the feeder? Don’t you love the gorgeous blue/grey of the Nuthatch’s cloak, more visible in picture #2?

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see here, the Goldfinches don’t seem to have trouble getting along with either the Hairy (photo #1) or the Downy Woodpeckers (Photo #2).

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, this summer and fall, I don’t think I’ve seen so many  Hairy Woodpeckers on my feeders.  They certainly do seem to look like Downies on steroids.  Here are some nice shots I got of the female  Hairy.  You can tell the difference because the only the male has a red spot on the back of his head – like in the case of the Downies.

So, I’ll just end with a shot of a Titmouse and a Goldfinch snacking away.

Until the Titmouse turns to me with a definite, “Who you lookin’ at, human!” expression.

 

Adieu, Summer, Adieu

birds, frog, gardens, Goldfinch, goldfinches, Nature, New England, Red bellied Woodpecker, Redbellied Woodpecker, rosebreasted grosbeak, summer, wood peckers, , , , , , , , , ,
I had planned to do this farewell -to- summer blog much earlier, but since the heat and humidity of the first couple of weeks of September seemed to embody summer hanging on by the claws, I figured I’d better wait.  So, now that crisp fall breezes, pellucid blue skies, and incipient flares of leaf color are taking over, I guess it’s time.

June started us off nicely.  I filled our window boxes and other planters with bright colors that “flowered,” if you will, abundantly.

 

The mound beside the fish pond had gorgeous Irises and Marigolds, beautifully complementing blue with light orange.

 

 

 

 

We had some nice fancy Irises in the front yard, as well.  Interestingly, we did not have as many blooms as usual.  Perhaps the May frost nipped a few?

 

 

 

 

 

The sea-rose bushes in the back yard climbing up the slope had tons of gorgeous pink blossoms.  Here’s a shy little bee hiding among the petals.

 

 

 

July was fun for beasts, birds, and flower.  One morning when I went to rinse out the cat-food cans before putting them in the recyclables, I found this fellow chilling in a bucket that had filled with water.  For a few days, this was his private pool, with the high grass surrounding making up his stomping, rather, hopping grounds.  Yang was careful not to mow around where the frog hung out.

 

 

Yang put up a new bird feeder that is sheltered by a globe cage.  The little birds loved it!  Here you can see the Goldfinches mobbing the feeder.  I think that sparrow must have worn a yellow feather to sneak in.  Of course if you’re a larger bird and a Redbellied Woodpecker, you can still grab a snack.  If you click on the photo and look carefully, you can see our friend Red using his looong woodpecker’s tongue to grab some food.

 

A Rosebreasted Grosbeak was just able to sneak in there, himself – though he and the Orioles faded away unusually early, in later July.

 

The butterfly bush near the house attracted quite a crew.  Here, you can see one of the several Tiger Swallow Tails who daily dined on the shrub.  We also got some hummingbirds, Wolf Moths, and Bees dropping by for a nectar treat.

 

Usually, our rose from China only gives us one bloom, but this year it gave us two at the same time.  Neat, huh?

 

 

August brought us continued Goldfinch mobbing, and the flowers began to fade a bit.  We had lots of Morning Glories, which I forgot to photograph!  This year, we had orchid, magenta, purple, pink, blue, blue/white, and the white moon flowers.

 

I did remember to photograph the Ghost Pipes that sprang up!  I remembered we had them once before during a rainy summer years back. Consequently, I predicted we might see more this year.  Boy, was I right!  I’ve never had so many!

 

So, on to Autumn! 

Backyard Birdwatching Is the Best!

birds, cardinal bird, catbirds, chickadee, Goldfinch, goldfinches, Indigo Bunting, Redbellied Woodpecker, rosebreasted grosbeak, rosebrested grosbeak, spring, summer, , , , , , , , , ,
As you may have extrapolated from many of my posts, Yang and I are great bird watchers.  We’ve traveled all over the Northeast (and to Canada, China, England, and France in the past) to sight all kinds of befeathered critters.  My count for species this year is now a whopping 93!  However, I can’t help agreeing with him that we often see a greater numbers of birds and species on our bird feeders thnt we do on our trips to woods, fields, rivers, and oceans!  Maybe this blog will lead you to agree.

Many of our regular spring and summer visitors have made their appearances here.  I can report that I’ve seen one Hummingbird, lots of Goldfinches and House Finches, Red-winged Blackbirds (male and female), and Cardinals by the score.  Our Chickadees and Titmice have briefly been on haiatus, brooding their babes, but they are now back at work snagging black-oil sunflower seeds.  It’s also so much fun to see Mommy and Daddy (mostly Daddy) Cardinals bringing their kids to the feeders now that the little tykes can fly.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of these guys, but I do have quite a few of some of my other feathered favorites.

One of my favorite species are the Rosebreasted Grosbeaks.  Usually, we get the females first, then the males; however, it was the opposite this year.  We had at least one male, finally, on a feeder.  Then, tragedy struck:  we found him dead on the ground under a tree.  Yang and I were heartbroken.  These guys were like our pals.  Still, our hearts mended a bit two week later when we found another male chomping on sunflower seeds.  Then we saw a female.  Then we saw two males at the same time!  There could be up to thirty males on that feeder as long as they didn’t all show up together!  By the way, the males are quite aggressive.  They don’t take guff from each other and not from Grackles, Blue Jays, or Mourning Doves.  The females can be tough cookies as well.  Anyway, I’m glad they are back.  Below is a shot of the males in a more pacific mod. I guess they can stand each other when multiple  tubes of seeds separate them.

 

Another of our beloved colorful visitors is the Baltimore Oriole.  After long waiting, we saw one toward the end of May, then nothing!  Many an orange might have withered away if not for other birds. So, we almost gave up hope of seeing another Oriole – until in the middle of June Orioles reappeared!  We saw a male several days in a row, then a female for a couple of days, then a week later:  a juvenile.  It’s been a couple of weeks and – nothing!  Of course, who knows what shows up when Yang and I are away, but we haven’t seen any Orioles since.  I guess this was just a stopover on their way to their real summer grounds.  Well, at least we saw a few of them!  And the oranges did not go to waste.

We have discovered that Catbirds adore orange pulp!  When there’s no suet to be had (and even when there is!) our catbird couple come by to snack on the orange halves we have set out.  They must keep up their strength, since they have a nest with babies on our property.

Mr. Redbellied Woodpecker thinks the oranges are pretty cool stuff, too.  You can see him having a grand time chowing down on pulp.  Maybe the Orioles are afraid to go for the oranges with these guys around!

One idea that Yang came up with to thwart the squirrels from stealing food from the birds (and breaking our feeders) was to buy a tube feeder inside a globed cage.  It also had the advantage of preventing the big bully birds like Grackles, Doves, and Jays from keeping the little birds from food.  it works. Of course, medium size birds like the Rosebreasted Grosbeak and the female Redwinged Blackbirds can get in, without being bullies.  Tough luck male Red Wings!  Birds with long beaks also have a shot – like the Redbellied Woodpecker.  The House finches try to out-aggress the Goldfinches, but the latter either hold their own or just wait and dive in when the coast is clear.  Titmice and Chickadees are too fast for anyone to harass them!

 

 

 

So, you can see, we’ve seen a healthy variety of avian visitors right outside out windows.  Bring on the Scarlet Tanagers, the Pileated Woodpeckers, and the Indigo Buntings!  It wouldn’t be the first time one of them has shown up at chez Yang.

 

 

“You’re Own Private Audubon”

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You’ll pardon me for paraphrasing the B-52s, but bird watching in my back yard since spring has sprung really has been like living in my own private Audubon. Yang pointed out that we often see more birds (in number and variety) through our sun porch windows than we do on many of our nature walks! It’s been a delight to see many old friends return.

First back were these Mockingbirds. Usually we see one in February or early March. S/He doesn’t stay long, but chows down for a day or two – maybe a week – and then is on the way to wherever Mockingbirds like to chill. This year, we got TWO. A honeymooning couple? I don’t know, but they were a pleasure to see.

 

Another of the spring early birds are the Red-Winged Blackbirds. In my yard, they are one of the earliest sign of spring rolling in. These guys actually showed up in the end of February – and I’ve never seen so many of them! Usually their numbers tend to thin out as we get into May, but this year we still have many of these visitors with the red and yellow epaulets. You can see this chap flashing his shoulder embellishments as he shares the feeder with a grumpy-looking Grackle – tons of Grackles off and on since February. Below is the blackbird taking a turn on the suet.

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In fact, everyone seems to be into suet this year! You saw the Mockingbirds above. And get a load of both the female and male Downy Woodpeckers. You can distinguish their genders by the red dot on the back of the male’s head.

 

 

 

 

 

These two aren’t the only woodpeckers who visit us. Through the winter and still into the spring, we’ve had a pair of Redbellied Woodpeckers chilling with us. In fact, this male is probably the one Yang and I saved from frostbite after he was stunned from hitting a window – the woodpecker, not Yang. Anyway, we call him Red and his mate Ruby. Original, aren’t we?

Of course we also had a spring newcomer woodpecker: my friend Flicker (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.). Just last week, I saw him hunting insects where my and my neighbor’s yard meet.

One of my favorite returnees is the Catbird. I love the way they say my name in one of their calls: “Sharon!” Last year we had two. This year, I’ve seen four! I don’t think they’re all pals, either. One day, I saw two of them in my Canadian Maple with their heads up, beaks pointing skyward, and their shoulders thrown back in a stand off. Bird number three was merrily chowing down on suet all the while. Who knows where number four went. Still, I do see two, three, four of them traveling together, making the rounds of the bird feeders in my yard.

 

We’ve also had some more colorful returnees as well. Although a Goldfinch or two would come by during the winter, we had a huge influx in April. They’ve thinned out a bit, but it’s been fun watching the boys gradually change back to their bright yellow duds. They’ve also broadened their tastes. Rather than only snacking on sunflower hearts, they are now going for the black oil seeds, no longer too lazy to crack them open with their powerful finch beaks. This fella is giving the feeder a quizzical study before he zeroes in on dinner.

 

Finally, May brought back two of my favorite friends. First, the Baltimore Orioles. This year we’ve seen two adult males and one juvenile. These guys love their oranges! Yang gets them the good ones from the Asian grocery store in town.

 

One day, Yang and I saw Dad taking his young son out for his first drink.

Dad says, “Watch me, son, it’s simple.”

 

The Kid dives in and proud Pop looks on.

 

Then they both turn to our window and stare: “What’re YOU lookin’ at?!”

One week later, who should come to town but the last of our colorful spring regulars: the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak. Usually we get a couple of couples. However, this year, I’ve only seen the male. Still, for all I know, it’s not the same male every time. There could be a bunch of them, each showing up one at a time. However many, these guys are always gorgeous to see! Here one of them is sharing the feeder with a House Finch. He doesn’t look too chummy, though, does he?

Of course, we’re not the only ones who like to watch the birds from the sun porch. But the girls are kept safely apart from feathered visitors.

Now, bring on the Indigo Bunting and the Scarlet Tanager!