The birds that cannot tolerate cold at all migrate to warmer southern climates. Of the ones that remain behind to overwinter, there's verying amounts of cold weather that each type of bird can tolerate. Some can tolerate a lot more cold than others. I don't know how much cold they can tolerate but I know they need to eat more, in most cold weather conditions, in order to stay warm. Birds are able to take some measures to stay warmer, like fluffing up their feathers. A lot of "our" local birds shelter up close to the house in bitter cold, hanging out on the covered porches, in dense evergreen shrubs, even inside the garage if they can sneak in there while the door is open.

We just feed them all in the winter, including the grackles. At our house, the grackles only come on the coldest days whereas a lot of the songbirds come to the feeders every day. They stay a lot longer in cold weather. Most small songbirds need a lot of calories in winter to keep their metabolism fired up to create heat to keep themselves warm.

Would I rather not feed the grackles? Yes, of course, but I'm not going to deny food to all the birds just so the grackles will leave.

After a rare extremely cold weather period in winter, we might find a dead bird or two on our property that likely succumbed to the cold, but not often and not in great numbers. Even then, all we know is that it is a dead bird---we can assume the cold weather killed it but we can't know for sure.

Tim and I feed the birds because we love having them around and we feel a certain responsibility to the wildlife on our property. We try to make sure food and water are always available, and this includes leaving berry-producing native plants for them when we cleared the land, and also planting berry-producing plants for them too.

It isn't that we feel like we "have to" feed them, but we certainly "want to" and I think they need the help. It can be very, very, very quiet outside and when I walk out of the garage with a big bucket of bird seed, the birds start singing and chirping and calling out to one another, getting very excited very quickly. They quickly gather and start eating even before I've made it back inside. Their enthusiastic and rapid response tells me they really need the food.

I was out this morning putting out bird seed at 6:45 a.m. and all the birds were waiting for me when I went out.

Since the sow stopped and sun came out late yesterday, the finches are everywhere to go along with the usual mix.

We have all windows along our dining area with the area just outside the windows being a 20' by 14' open patio surrounded on the north, west, and south sides by the house. The drifts here are up to the base of the windows, about 3' tall, and have basically brought the "ground" up to the level of the windows. I have been throwing various types of bird food out there so the birds come right next to the windows to eat. It is an amazing up-close show. We only have about a 4 to 8 cardinals at a time, but have about 50 juncos (I think) and 50 finches, and 20 to 30 of what I think are red-winged blackbirds in their winter coats. there are a handful of other sparrows, and one sparrow-looking bird with red on parts of him that I need to look up.

With my new laptop and router, I am sitting at the table 2 feet from the window and the birds are right next to me. It is great. I just need more varieties of birds. I'd love to hear what birds you guys are seeing and what they like to eat.

We've had a few blackbirds at our feeder the last couple days, but we are feeding anyway. I don't think they are grackles but some of them might be. Some of these have yellow wing patches.

The starlings are the ones I wouldn't want to feed. I watched a flock of starlings wipe out a suet cake in 15 min while I was working for a woman in town a few years back. But our suet cakes last two or three days in cold weather, attracting mostly woodpeckers and titmice.

And don't forget to take out warm water every couple hours.

Yeah they are emptying all four of my feeders daily right now... I have just taken to throwing out a couple cups every few hours right now and am amazed at how they are just attacking the snow to get to it. It just amazes me how there is no squabbling given how many birds show up... guess that they are just trying to conserve energy and dont want to waste it in pointless fighting. =)

Scott, I wonder if the sparrow looking bird with red on parts could be a purple finch. I have that here and the female looks very sparrow like and the male has a red--not purple despite the name--crown and tail patch.

I have cardinals, bluejays, purple and goldfinches, juncos, titmice, sparrows, chickadees, and housewrens at the seed feeders and downy woodpeckers, redbellied woodpecker, yellowbellied sapsucker, nuthatches at the suet feeder and the brown creeper shows up occasionally. The bluebirds drink water but they must want something beside what I'm feeding because I don't see them eat, just drink. A few days ago a pair of flickers were walking across the yard, but I didn't see them come to eat or drink. And as I said, a few blackbirds recently.

We live in the country so may have more variety than someone in town.

I have about the same birds Dorothy has, and also tons of white-winged doves. I put out cracked corn for them. We also have a lot of red-winged blackbirds. They used to come only during snow and periods of bitter cold, but this year they've hung around the ponds quite a lot and will eat a little cracked corn with the doves every morning and every evening.

This morning I followed the tracks to see what "else" was looking for food last night and we had deer, coyotes, deer, rabbits, deer, voles, deer, armadilloes, deer and raccoons. This evening I'll try putting out some henscratch and deer corn near the veggie garden because that's where all the rabbit tracks were. All the other animal tracks were about 150 yards further west out back where we put out the deer corn.

Starlings are a nuisance and some have been here today, but if I go out and chase them off the other birds will leave too. They usually don't come here but hang out more often around the wheat fields.

The sun is shining and the sky is blue, the wind has dropped and the thermometer on our front porch shows 23 degrees (it hardly seems possible it can be that warm) and the yard is full of birds. I need to go outside sometime in the next hour and refill the finch feeders. Those little tiny birds are devouring tons of seed.

I think it might be a purple finch. I had zeroed in on the picture I have of a house finch, but now that you mention it, I think the coloring is more like the purple finch, although mine does not have hardly any coloring on the top of the head, but everything else matches.

I also wonder if my redwing blackbirds are really redwings since there is only a little red on a very few of them and most (90%) look like immature ones or females. Any ideas?

We live near a flood plane with lots of mature trees, but our house is a couple hundred yards away from the trees. I don't have any woodpeckers near my house, and no bluebirds right now although the bluebirds nest here in our boxes each summer. The bluebirds at our farm (in Okmulgee county) frequent our feeders there, but we only feed cull pecans there which they seek to love.

I put out some chicken feed, but the birds only seem partly interested in that. They go for the sunflower seeds, but I am running out. I will probably try old pecans tomorrow.

I have actually crept around the side of the house to take out starlings in the back yard with my shotgun a few times. My record is 6 with a single shot. I'm a redneck.

I have tons of birds here, but if there's a bird in my yard it's probably either a sparrow or a house finch. There's a pair of cardinals that visit every morning and a some doves, but that's it. I still love watching them, though.

Leslie

I saw a tip in Birds in Bloom about feeding the suet cakes in the wire cages. You take the plastic wrapper off, but leave the cake in the plastic container. Once you put it in the square wire container, you use the chain to hang it upside down. That way the birds (such as, small woodpeckers, chickadees and wrens) that can hang upside down to eat get the suet instead of the grackles and starlings. I have been using that method for two years now and it has worked wonders.

Scott,

I think you probably have immature redwings. We have a ton of the immature ones this year, so it must have been a really good breeding year for them last year.

I've linked a page from whatbird.com that has photos of some immature redwings so you can compare them to what you're seeing.

I mix black oil sunflower seeds with hen scratch and the birds devour it all, although of course the black oil sunflower seeds get eaten first.

In typical non-snowy winter weather, we mostly have cardinals (sometimes 12 or 15 of them at one time), chickadees, sparrows, finches, bluebirds, doves, woodpeckers and an occasional flicker. Later in winter, when the migration is on we'll have oodles of other kinds, including the very entertaining cedar waxwings. When it is really cold/snowy though, the starlings and redwing blackbirds descend in large numbers and quite a few crows show up and even an occasional grackle, though we don't have many grackles here.

Today we had squirrels for the first time since the snow fell. Usually the squirrels aren't in the yard much because the dogs chase them off, but the dogs were lazing around inside staying warm and dry. Often the squirrels try to chase off the birds from the feeders, but these squirrels didn't stand a chance today because there were so many birds.

I noticed yesterday that a lot of the birds were in the southern wax myrtles eating the tiny little berries, but none of the birds were desperate enough yet to eat the berries on the possumhaw hollies.

Dawn

Well, I guess the link did not link.

I'll try it again.

Here is a link that might be useful: Immature Redwing Blackbird

I am looking out the window right now and I see about 40 of them, but none are black or have the red patches. yesterday I saw two that were almost black and you could see a pale red band on them. I think they are Redwings, but I still have a bit of doubt. It just seems like there would be more that resembled adult males. They do look like the ones in the link.

Yesterday I got the 4x4 out to the store and picked up some chicken scratch on the way home. I also bought 50 more lbs of sunflower seeds. I also have about 50 lbs of chicken "crumble" and some game bird starter crumble. They do seem to prefer the sunflower seeds.

OK, just now one single adult male redwing was there with the 20 or 30 other redwings before I frightened them by accident. Why just one adult male out of so many here????

Because the others are females and they are his harem?

Maybe all the other males are out buying beer for Super Bowl Sunday?

Maybe all the other males are sleeping off their pre-Super Bowl party celebrations last night?

I don't know why you only have one male, but here at our house the females always outnumber the males. Often the males eat early in the day and the females eat later.

Female redwings don't really look that much like the males, so it is easy to tell that you have more females than males. Lots of people don't even realize the females are female redwings and think they are something else.

Yesterday, in a rather odd form of behavior, the males were going mad over the cattail seedheads, and the females weren't. I have no idea what that means.

I see a pretty similar gender segregation with the cardinals too. The males come in big groups of 10 or 12 or 15 to eat. Later on, the females come in smaller groups of 2, 3, 4 or 5. I wonder why.

Finally, how about the deer and the way they feed. Our does and fawns, even the young males, come together in a group. They eat first. The minute our really big buck shows up, all the others scatter. It isn't that the buck is aggressive and pushes them away from the food. In fact, he stands in the neighbor's pasture about 20' from where the deer are feeding and waits patiently. He never comes to the food and nudges them away from it. However, from the moment he shows up, all the others are antsy and nervous and hungrily snatch a few more bites before quickly leaving together as a group. Respect for the buck's superior size and strength? Fear? Who knows what it is, but it is interesting to watch.

Dawn

I was just thinking the same thing about the males and the Super Bowl!

I now have over a hundred of them all over the ground cleaning up the cracked corn that remains. There are about 5 males, a few that look like mature females (slender and brown), and all the rest immature looking. I'm getting a little tired of them.