Spring Time Wildlife Watching

[Bogertophis]

Robins is what I have not finches, I'm just a moron lol. We also see the occasional cardinal come through and our cats are immediately glued to the windows over that bright red. Typically we only see them during the fall when they're passing through though unfortunately. It's funny that you say you feed during the winter. I was reading something recently that said that you should do that because migrating birds will get use to your feeders being a safe place to grab a bite before continuing wherever they're going.

Not sure how true that is, but it was interesting to think about.

I think that's true about migrating birds. I can remember in a prior year, when I was more attentive (started feeding birds earlier, in late fall), I had so many amazing birds here that I had to look them up -never having seen them before (or some, like orioles, that I recognized, but again, they don't live here)- and they'd be around only for a short time, like you said- they were obviously migrating. Whereas robins, blue jays, blue birds, cardinals, woodpeckers & various smaller birds are local residents.

Anyway, if the winter brings snow (& we don't normally get a lot here, but we did this year) it keeps many birds from finding food, plus they need more calories when it's cold- this year was really miserable for them, I'm sure. It was pretty hard on people too. When I'd fill the seed basket & put out suet, they took turns & picked it clean pretty fast. The robins don't normally eat seeds or suet, they like worms & bugs. I also have various shrubs around my house that produce berries that some birds eat too- they're not edible for humans, only for birds, so I'm sure that helps too. If you want to encourage cardinals, they like black oil sunflower seeds. Woodpeckers love suet- but some other birds like it too. The various little finch-types like the smaller safflower seeds.