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few birds
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Posted by jayt63 (My Page) on Fri, Jan 22, 10 at 13:05
| Is it just in NE PA or have others noticed it too? This year there seem to be fewer birds visiting my feeders than usual. I have a few finches (house, gold), one or two sparrows, several turfed Titmice, quite a few Slate Colored Juncos, a few black capped chickadees and a few doves. Not many birds at all. I have eight feeders and seldom have to refill them. I am using black sunflower seed. |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: few birds
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| Not the case here in Northern California. I have daily visitors of all kinds -- house finches, goldfinches on thistle socks, white-breasted nuthatches, chestnut-backed chickadees, oak titmouses, tons of golden-crowned and white-crowned sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, and a pair of spotted towhees eating the spilled seed on the ground. I use a blend of millet, striped sunflower, black oil sunflower and sunflower hearts in my feeders. I also have a suet feeder that draws the nuthatches and chickadees, but also downy and Nuttall's woodpeckers. |
RE: few birds
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| If you locate the point on the map where Interstate 80 crosses the Ohio/Pa line I am exactly 3.5 miles S.W. of that point and we are having just the opposite here. I have at least 15 Cardinals here daily, and on one occasion i counted 25 as well as 15 to 20 Bluejays and a flock of about 40 Morning doves that come both morning and evening. I have seen as many as 6 Nuthatches on the hopper feeder at one time. To date I have photo documented 7 species of sparrows and the Tufted Titmice, Juncos and Chickadees are too numerous to count. the hopper feeder holds about 5lb of seed and I have to fill it at least twice a day, sometimes three times. About 6 feet from the hopper I have a suet feeder on the tree trunk and I have seen as many as three Downy Woodpeckers on it at one time, plus I have confirmed at least 4 Red bellied Woodpeckers, a couple Hairy Woodpeckers and on one occasion I saw a Pileated Woodpecker, although he was here and gone too fast to get a picture. I have two tube type Nyger feeders for Finches, which are attracting House Finches and Gold Finches, although we are not seeing as many Finches as usual. The last 50lb bag of bulk birdseed I bought seemed to have about 20% cracked corn in it. Most of the smaller birds are tossing the corn on the ground, but in the last two weeks I have noticed about 10 to 15 Wild Turkeys feeding on the corn in the dim light just before sunup and the Sparrows and Juncos seem to ground feed on it throughout the day, not to mention that we have had a few crows drop in. Yesterday I saw a flock of crows fly over and I couldn't believe it. It took almost 15 minutes for the full flock to pass. All in all, I would say we are seeing far more birds than usual this year. Fortunately we have an ideal environment for birds here. Our house is on a 5 acre lot which is surrounded with 60ft high pine trees on the perimeter, a small 3 acre cattail swamp on one side and a 25 acre open field on the other. One the opposite side of the cattail swamp there is a 35 acres open horse pasteur and all of that is surrounded by about 400 acres of old growth hardwoods. The houses on our road are about 1/4 mile apart, and I spend a lot of time hiking the area with my camera. In talking to the neighbors I have discovered that I am the only one within a mile either way that has bird feeders. As a winter project 5 guys at the Senior center have spent the winter building over 100 nesting boxes which we intend to hang throughout the woods area in the next two to three weeks. |
RE: few birds
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i get more total birds this winter than normal heavy snows bring in 50 to 60 juncos of all varietys and a dozen or more mountain chickadees and some black cap chickadees a few nuthatches and 4 jays who are all the time some magpies and some woodpeckers and some sparrows but not large numbers. i always get some starlings but this winter a whole flock of noisy aggressives starlinf try to eat everything in site, And a dozen or more eurasian doves,
i do have more towhees than usual this winter,
I took down my platform and hopper feeders cause the starlings were emptying them as fast as i could fill them and left up cage feeders with suet or woodpecker blocks
which the starlings have harder time eating out of.
I have three stumps standing under the feeders and chase off the starlings and spread mixed seed on them enough for the juncos and other ground feeders to eat before the starling try to come back. a lot of others on here say they don't feed cracked corn but just about every bird i get eats it and i use a lot of it. |
RE: few birds
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| i am in northern michigan and i have definitely noticed fewer birds here this year. i do have the normal variety but just fewer. maybe it's the mild winter. |
RE: few birds
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| I'm in central Ontario and I've noticed we have fewer types of birds around this winter than usual. Usually we don't even get a lot of birds til about March. We get the most variety during the spring/summer. Right now we are getting mostly the chickadees, finches, sparrows and a lone woodpecker. They seem to know when the worst of the winter will be over before they come back. Maybe they're trying to tell us something? |
RE: few birds
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| I'm in central Florida and we're having a colder than usual winter (two or three days when the temp got below freezing) but we had a good, wet summer and I think there's still plenty of wild food for the birds so they don't have to come to the feeders. There are lots of birds around, just not at the feeders. |
RE: few birds
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| I'm in scPA. I'm noticing quite a bit fewer birds than normal here. I can't imagine what it is. I posted a similar post here not long ago. Did you read it? I do have some hawks around but they don't usually come in too close except for the other day. I wonder if it's because of the colder than normal winter we've had here and they went south w/ the snowbirds of the human kind!! I think I might see more in a few weeks w/ migration time about then. |
RE: few birds
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| I am about 25 miles north of Pittsburgh, PA. We also are experiencing far fewer birds at the feeders this year. 8 hanging feeders and a protected ground feeder offer thistle, sunflower, safflower, cracked corn, and a variety of suet cakes. In past years these feeders were mobbed throughout the day. This year we have the usual variety of birds, just far fewer of them. However, our daughter who lives just 7 miles away and is just feeding sunflower and suet has more birds than she remembers in the past. |
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