[Mnbird] Young'uns
Brian and Cindy Drill
bcdrill at charter.net
Sun Jul 26 13:19:33 CDT 2020
Happy Sunday to all. I don't know why I rarely associate the end of
July with young birds, but there have been so many in the past couple of
weeks.
Yesterday our second nest of robins fledged from the honeysuckle
trellis. We almost missed the start of this brood, since it came about
with far less fanfare than the original construction efforts of the
first. The first nest produced 4, and the second 3 youngsters. The
last to leave spent half the day perched on the carport eaves, ignoring
his parents pleas to move on--somewhere, anywhere.
Early last week, we were suddenly inundated with chipping sparrows and
their ungainly foster children (suspiciously resembling cowbirds) around
the back feeder in particular. Much to my delight, after having seen
only 2 orioles this year during early migration, 3 young ones suddenly
began spending time in our back yard. I quickly replaced my oriole
feeders, but the new guys didn't seem to care--they were all about the
birdbath. Our little male hummingbird was pretty tickled with the
orange nectar feeder, however, and stopped using the other hummingbird
feeders for a while. I haven't seen the orioles this week at all.
Now there are numerous house finch families to fill the void, along with
young chickadees. A trio of fuzzy downy woodpeckers played King of the
Hill with the front bird feeder. A pair of cardinals with two offspring
arrived in the front yard; to all appearances the adults were vigorously
convincing the young that they were ready for an empty nest. Goldfinches
seem to not be interested in thistle this summer, but are emptying the
sunflower feeder as fast as I can fill it.
A small group of waxwings arrived while I was in the yard this past
week. They grouped in the maple tree, and one flew into the magnolia
over the pond and whistled to the others. When no one came to join it,
it flew back to the maple and tried to regroup them, and then back over
the pond. After more whistling back and forth, the one gave up and the
entire group moved on. Proof, I guess, that you can lead a flock to
water, but you can't make them drink.
Finally, our first RB grosbeak of the year--a young male has begun to
visit us. My husband is disappointed to only see him in his juvenile
plumage, but I hope he remembers where he visited and maybe comes back
next year all grown up.
Oh, and my daughter and I were thrilled to see indigo buntings last week
on a walk in a local park--2 males, sitting on the trail and singing
their little hearts out. Happy birding to all, Cindy in North Mankato
--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.lists.mnbird.net/pipermail/mnbird_lists.mnbird.net/attachments/20200726/73e20268/attachment.htm>
More information about the Mnbird
mailing list