Jane, I saw a similar (unwelcome) face poking out of one of our bluebird boxes, but he left. The blues are getting ready to nest and still seem to have control, but we are monitoring the situation. Sorry about Ivy and hope she isn't suffering too much.

Steve, great pics of pretty birds!

Claire, we only seem to have 3-5 turkeys in the woods right now. I'm surprised they haven't found the thistle sock. I suspect they are getting some food elsewhere.

I was very excited today to get my first photos of a pileated woodpecker! I don't recall ever seeing one, here or elsewhere. She was in the pine trees, large and black with that ridiculously brilliant head. :)

Susan

Stunning, Susan! The neck looks so thin and the shoulders so square for a woodpecker. Woodpeckers usually have a smooth transition between the head and body, almost as if they can't move the neck. I've never seen a pileated.

Claire

Good catch on the pileated, Susan. I've captured a male here, but not a female and he is usually way out back in the higher tree tops. He's pretty much as elusive as the barred owl I've heard for almost 40 years - can hear him, but I've never seen him.

Goldfinch color on the Ides of March - much brighter than just 2 weeks ago.

No post processing, that's his color and winking eye. Little nubs of growth on the heritage birch :)

Nice to see bird pictures from you, Steve. Flowers, birds, flowers, birds...like horse and carriage.

Jane

Nice pileated shots, Susan. We have them here year-round, but I've never managed to get a good photo even though I see and hear them fairly often. Their woodworking is one of the few types of woodpecker holes I can ID, long and rectangular with jagged ends, and I often see evidence that they have been working out in the woods as well as hearing their distinctive calls.

There were deer out in the field yesterday near dusk. Watching them moving through the snow, it was clear that it is still difficult going as they irregularly punch down through the layers of remaining snow (perhaps 2'). Between problems finding food and difficulty moving around in the deep snow, I know this must have been a difficult year for them. These two looked relatively healthy though.

NHBabs, I know you are getting closer to capturing a moose. Just a matter of time. Someday we'll all tune in here and Voila! A NH moose.

If not a NH moose, there's always a NH mousse...

Claire

edit note: my apologies, but it's snowing again and I'm getting unbalanced.

It's been a long winter, we understand. A little post prandial snifter might help.

Claire, Granite State Candy is the local candy store, and they also have wonderful ice cream in summer. Fun place to visit; the scent is delightful and there are huge windows into the candy kitchen.

Enjoyed everyone's photos. I hope Ivy will be ok. We haven't seen any deer yet, just one fat porcupine. The snow was crusty enough the other day that turkeys could walk on top. Hard to believe it's almost April 1 and time to take the bird feeders down. Does anyone keep their feeders up all year? I know we have bears nearby. Have only seen moose twice in NH, once in our own field. Hate to take the feeders in while birds still need food.

A mixed flock of juncos and chickadees came to call yesterday afternoon, with the juncos rummaging around in the few areas on the west side of the house near the foundations that have bare ground, and the chickadees visiting the Viburnum and the dogwood.

@NHBabs, ah-HA! A perfect picture of a chickadee and junco! Good for you!

NHBabs, love those little green sprouts in the junco picture. Gives one hope!

defrost49, my feeders are only up from late fall to early spring, but I think they will stay up just a little longer this year...at least until there's some indication that spring is actually here!

Susan

Pair of bluebirds....cute.

Turkey vulture....not so much,

Susan

Pair of blue birds VERY cute. T.Vulture needs a little love. In the sun, they have a gorgeous, shiny auburn color in their wings and, they are very good chimney-seekers in winter. Okay, that's all I got. :)

She has taken up advanced woodworking out back. I saw the large black and white wings and went outside to see her. It's a wonder nobody dubbed them 'bishop' birds. The red hat is great.

Jane

Hey, defrost49, I don't think we've ever had a picture of a porcupine on this thread series! (hint, hint).

Susan: That turkey vulture may not be classically cute, but it's probably the closest to cute I've ever seen of a vulture (that's not saying much).

That's interesting, NHBabs, that your juncos hang around with chickadees. Here the juncos seem to be buddies with the song sparrows and I think they roost near each other (near the breezeway or under my porch).

I'm jealous of all these pileated woodpeckers - I checked eBird and there was one reported in February about five miles away (sigh).

Claire

Great pileated pics, Jane. Yes, that crest is brilliant. Actually, mine was a female too.

Okay, here's a pic that shows some of the warmer turkey vulture tones of which you speak. Claire, not a bad bird at all (does a lot of dirty work too), but not really a "looker". DH took face-on pics a while back that would definitely scare small children.

Susan

Having worked in a couple places that did raptor rehab, I have a soft spot in my heart for turkey vultures - I find them similarly attractive to turkeys. One had to be cautious in handling them as regurgitation is one of their defense mechanisms when scared, not an experience I would recommend. Hinkely, Ohio has a "Buzzard Day" celebration on March 15, supposedly the day they always return (though living not too far away, I did see some earlier than that one year.) Living in the river valley here, we get a fair number of TVs catching updrafts where the sun heats the field or wind hits the valley walls.

150 feet up, they're kind of attractive.

That's a fabulous closeup of the turkey vulture, Susan! They are fascinating to see. Who knew that they resort to regurgitation for self-defense!? I didn't!! (Like llamas or alpacas!)

Glad others have respect for turkey vultures too. Cute can be overrated. Last year I saw one presenting.....on the ground strutting and also up in the trees. Very impressive and huge, with that wing span. I didn't get any decent pics. With my new camera, I hope I'll be ready if I get that chance again. :)

That's a perfect picture of bluebirds, Susan! Usually we only see turkey vultures high up but one time while driving we saw one trying to get at some road kill. It was huge. I think we are starting to see some color change in wild turkey heads. I'm not sure our juncos are still around but we usually see a flicker with a flock of robins. (Don't try to say that too quickly.) I think there are two bird sounds that always make me marvel and stop to listen and that's the loud pecking the pileated makes and the second is the buzz of a hummingbird you can hear before you spot where it's at.

RWBs arrived today - in 50mph winds, with a few females. The wind and 6 squirrels forced out the cloud of about 20. I like flock better, but cloud, cluster and merl are used. Blackbird Group Names

It's nice to have the video of moments in a forum member's yard. Youtube was a good idea for showing us, Claire. I haven't signed up at Youtube and usually hit the camera's record button by mistake. Someday I'll try video, but for today, it's nice to see your turkeys getting ready for another season.

Is this a female purple finch? House finches are here often, but today I saw a very dark reddish purple male - no picture - and this little gal has the two eye stripes and partial breast markings that in Crossley, at least, looks like a purple finch.

Jane

It looks like a female purple finch to me, Jane, not that I've seen too many of them. The markings are much more pronounced than the house finch. I hope you get a picture of the male. According to Cornell's
All About Birds site:

The Purple Finch is the bird that Roger Tory Peterson famously described as a “sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.”

Claire

Mrs. Cardinal looks as happy as I feel about it snowing on the first day of Spring.

Of course they would not perch close enough to get in one frame, but stayed within a few feet of each other.

~ ~ Ivy update for those who may be interested or have a cat that suffers sudden loss of appetite: The little Siamese puzzle box is acting much better. Her bilirubin hit 3.9 but 3 days later it was 1.7. Norm is 0.1-0.6, I think. Via ultrasound, the bile duct was 8 cm, norm is 2. We may have somebody special who may go in and out of pancreatitis with age or it may be a one time occurrence. No definitive answer could be had by a visiting Tufts internal specialist and no extreme measures were taken or will be taken. After pill-popping her 4 times with cyprohepdatine for anorexia, (and she still likes me) she now eats, pees, poops, plays and purrs. Broiled lamb chops and shrimp did the trick! And, I now know more about a feline liver than ever before. :)

Jane

Jane: So glad to hear that Ivy's better! Whatever the eventual prognosis, it sounds like she's enjoying her life again.

Identifying finches isn't always straightforward when they refuse to look like the classic examples. Cornell has a tricky bird ids page on Cassin’s Finch, House Finch, and Purple Finch and I'm very relieved we don't have Cassin's Finches around here.

My guess is that you do have a female Purple Finch but I'm leaning toward a male House Finch. He has that rounded head and no obvious eyebrow stripe and the stripes on the breast are fairly pronounced. I'm not at all sure about the ID though. If I saw them on a PFW count day I'd email the photos to PFW.

Claire

Glad to hear Ivy is feeling better and hope it's a temporary thing with her liver.

The wild turkeys are happy to see some bare ground at the base of trees. I don't think we ever had a nice first day of spring.

Views from the first full day of spring in my yard:

Hairy Woodpecker

The tracks were partially filled in with new snow so they weren't too clear, but I think one set was from a fox (using NHBabs's instructions). That snow is now gone since I had to go out and feed the birds.

Claire

As I recall, you have a really good-looking local fox with good taste in yards.

Snow stopped, but the "dusting to an inch" became almost 4". On the full first day of SPRING, somebody found it just too hard to face.

Funny dove pic! I understand completely.

The snow has pretty much stopped now with a total of about 1-1/2 inches of very concentrated, dense snow. It's beginning to melt now - I cleared some paths anyway because the temperatures are going below freezing for a few days and that means more ice on top of the remnants I haven't chopped out yet.

More scenes from the first full day of Spring:

Claire

Not much fazes a crow.

Correction: It's snowing again.

Claire

Love the dove, Jane. Looks like it just had its nails done in hot pink. Glad Ivy is better.

Claire, we have crows around, but I've never seen one on the suet. Glad to see a robin around, but geesh,,,stop snowing!

Caught this hawk with the zoom yesterday...too far away to guess the size and a little fuzzy. Juvenile Cooper's? It looks like some pictures of one. What do you think? Something dive bombed a couple of male cardinals in the japanese maple the day before, but it was too quick to see what hawk it was. We think the cardinals made it out alive.

Oh look, I can see myself!

Susan

Susan: That goldfinch channeling the Greek
Narcissus is delightful!

The hawk looks like a Cooper's to me with the flat head and white supercilium and an especially confident look.

Claire

What Claire said, Susan, and the bird bath is great. Wonder what they think when see their reflection? Cute little guy. I've not seen a robin on suet either.


Well, we had fazed crows here this afternoon. As I've mentioned before, for decades we've fed all meat scraps to the crows and compost the produce bits. This afternoon one of those supermarket roasted chickens was disassembled and I brought the scraps out to the end of the melted driveway for the crows because we still have a foot of snow out back. The crows know the winter/summer routine and I was being watched by one crow from about 20' high directly over my head. We had a polite conversation as I spread out the odd bit and piece, my crow needs work, so I left to go back in and get my camera in hope that I could catch some crows in flight. I hope I can link to Flickr via houzz to show you what happened.

RS Hawks & Crows

Jane

Quite a collection of good-sized birds you attracted, Jane! Was it noisy with a lot of arguing or were they so interested in the food that they managed to coexist reasonable well?

Oh, just great pictures of the hawks and crows! Does that often happen with chicken scraps? Will have to try that sometime. :)

Wow, Jane, that's a great series of hard-to-believe pictures! The red-shouldered hawks eat cooked chicken! And the crows didn't mob them! I think I remember recently reading that someone said a red-shouldered hawk grabbed a piece of suet but I wasn't sure if that was an anomaly (or even real).

Maybe two hawks at one time is too much for a small flock of crows to mob? Or maybe the crows would have to leave the chicken to mob the hawks and that was too much to ask....

Claire

NHBabs - it was very quiet on the ground. Once the food was gone, they all flew up to the trees across the street and that is where the picture of the hawk and crow so close was taken. There certainly appeared to have been communication between them; alas, my lack of good Crow language comprehension... :)
Jane

Guess we were all writing at the same time. No, Susan, it's never happened like that before with hawks in the driveway. It has happened when I put scraps out back and turkey vultures spied the scraps from aloft and swooped in on the crows. A crow literally was pulling on a vulture tail feather to pull the vulture away from the food, but the vulture prevailed. That happened before the fancy digital cameras.

Actually, Claire, the crows hung in there pretty well. There are a couple of shots where the crows were side by side the hawks. True, the crows hung back when the pair of hawks ate, and I swear very nasty looks were delivered by the crows, but the crows polished off the minor pieces after the hawks flew up across the street. The crows are use to being fed 4-5 times weekly around 3pm. But today, the big guns strutted their stuff. I was surprised to see the one picture of the pair that shows one head and 4 feet. :) That event certainly made the day joyous.
Jane

Into the Nest: Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting, and Family Lives of Familiar Birds
Two things to share about birds with backyard bird enthusiasts, and, in answer to the interaction between crows and rs hawks,
Red-Shouldered Hawks and Crows

Pretty interesting society those two species live in. Sounds like Washington, D.C.

Jane

A pretty sight in the yard just after sunrise this morning...

Susan

The beautiful deer reminded me that NH Fish & Game found 12 deer dead in South Hampton due to people feeding them. The article explains that their stomach's change what they can digest during different seasons. I never knew this. http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Newsroom/2015/deer-deaths-032315.html

I grabbed the camera just in time to catch this guy's picture before he flew off to a different tree. A friend was supposed to visit that day to photography our bluebirds but she wasn't feeling well and it was very cold. She also asked if we ever saw owls and sure enough, this one showed up about 5pm.

Thanks, defrost, for the article. I couldn't get it via your link, but found it here:NH Wildlife Newsroom

I passed it along to a neighbor who does buy deer pellets from the farm store who I know wouldn't hurt anything, so the info is very good.

What a great owl! Barred, I think... super.

Jane

That's a really sobering article, defrost49. I'd never heard about this problem but it makes sense. I wonder if there's a happy medium where you can feed the deer something more like their natural browse and then gradually introduce the carbohydrate-rich pellets. Some method that doesn't involve stripping your favorite shrubs of leaves to give to the deer.

You're really fortunate to have seen the owl - owls are really special and I've never seen one here.

Claire

In a week's time, I'm counting fewer Juncos after their Red Baron aerial pursuits last weekend, am seeing a tad more dead grass as the snow retreats, and Mrs. Cardinal has gone from flakes on 3-21-2015

I fear I may be posting too many pictures, but this just happened. Not the clearest shot, it happened so quickly. See the keyboard? Pileated Woodpecker.

That could be a male Purple Finch, Jane - I'm not positive but the stripes on the breast are less distinct and the bill may be more conical than the House Finch (after squinting at the Cornell/PFW ID page).

That was sweet of the possum to politely return your celery chunks in the bowl. I greatly prefer melon to celery myself.

That keyboard is a neat marking for a woodpecker.

The turkey toms have an elaborate hierarchy established by nasty battles, and I've been noticing that this year two toms are buddies and display together, but a third is off on the side. The third doesn't seem to be attacked but he stops displaying as soon as one of the others comes by and glares at him. That happened this morning - another tom strutted by and then left when the third tom started eating instead of displaying.

Claire

Turkeys still rule.

Look who showed up today...first day out. Doesn't look any worse for wear to me. Vacuumed up a pouch full and zipped back under the deck. Oh, joy. Thus begins another year with Mr. Red Pants...sigh.

Cute little chipmunk, Jane - they're out here too.

72 comments to date and it's time for a new thread. It'll be up soon.

Claire.