It Is ON!

Oh, that's right! It IS ON!

We have super nice neighbors, don't get me wrong. However, she is stealing all of my birds! Okay, okay. Not really stealing. She clearly has more to attract the birds; Better feeders, MORE feeders, appropriate food. No wonder she's got all the birds over there.

I have seen a male American goldfinch over there, a male house finch, and a lot of others that I have yet to identify. It is nice to see them but I want them at my house :) Soooo.. I went and bought another shepherd's hook (a double) and tomorrow I am going to get a couple more feeders. I plan to designate one of them to thistle which finches really enjoy. They sell sock like feeders (there are cloth with tiny holes for the birds to grasp on to and for them to feed through), so I may get one of those. I am not sure yet.

I forgot to mention there is another bird I identified.
His picture is below and this is a white-breasted nuthatch. A very cool bird because it kind of sits funny. Bright blues on it too :)


I hope to post pictures of my set up soon. I just keep forgetting to take pictures! :P

Good night!

My Female American GoldFinch

This is a female American Goldfinch. Let me tell you a story about a couple of them we have in our area.

As I began my little bird watching hobby, I noticed this bird hanging in the magnolia tree. We have several houses hanging from the tree, but this bird seems to hang in the branches.

Well this little birdie started flying from the tree to our window, which is only probably 10 feet from the tree, I'd guess. Not only does she fly up to our window, but she has began to flutter in front of it and peck at our window!

Now I think this is absolutely adorable. I mean it happens SEVERAL times a day. At first it was just the one window, then it was both front windows. The other day I noticed her on the upstairs window and this morning I noticed her on the side of the house pecking at THAT window! Of course, that is where I have my bird feeder, so I wasn't completely surprised. But it just so cute!

Matt thought it was cute at first too, but as it kept happening more he's getting alittle concerned the bird/birds (because sometimes, although rare, there are TWO of them) are going to damage the brand new windows. Haha.

At first I thought the bird was male, which I suppose it still may be. There is much more yellow on it than the picture I posted (which is the female).


This is a picture of the male American Goldfinch. (left) and juvenile male American Goldfinch (right).

So the female and juvenile male look very a like. Hmmm.. I guess time will tell.

This Cool New Thing I Do

So, I will have to remember how to get this whole new blog thing started, but let me just explain this one.

A while back I heard co-workers discussing bird houses/bird feeders. I got a glimpse of what they were talking when they visited a website with all of these cool bird houses/feeders. I've always been interested in wild birds. I have always said "that would be a cool hobby for when I'm old". But why does it have to be then? Why can't it be now??

On Mother's Day, I went to Wild Birds Unlimited to check out there stuff. Very cool, very cool stuff is in there. The moment I walked in I was intimidated. So many different houses, feeders, seed, suit, blah blah blah. Where does one start?! I decided to get a book about different birds and a book about how to start feeding them. The latter describes how to attract them, etc. The other bird is one you can take on the field and if you find a blue bird, you look it up under the blue section and so on. Very nice book. The women in the store were very enthused to have a "new birder" come in to the store. I found the enthusiasm refreshing.

Since Mother's Day, I have been watching the birds in my area, learning more about them. It's very cool (or nerdy, which ever you want to refer to it as).

Right now I just have one feeder set up. I have had it set up for some time and I have noticed a few pretty birds come to it. Soon I will take pictures and get them on here.

My plans are to journal my findings on this blog. I am very excited about this new little hobby of mine. I just want to document it to see where it goes. If anything, it's exciting to me :)

That's all, folks!