Tag: dark-eyed junco
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Birds Around the Neighborhood
Ever since I almost missed the Cedar Waxwings at the beginning of March, I’ve been toting my camera along when we take the dogs on their morning walk around the neighborhood. That thing weighs six pounds! But it is worth it. Part of our normal walk takes us through an “old growth” part of the…
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World of Spun Glass
After a heavy fog all day yesterday, we woke up this morning to a world seemingly made of spun glass. Overnight the temperature had slowly cooled everything outside to well below freezing. As the water-saturated air hit the freezing surfaces, it froze to them. Drop by microscopic drop, the water in the fog built up…
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Happy Nature Photography Week!
In honor of nature photography week, here are some of my favorites from over the years. This plump little bird is a slate-colored of a dark-eyed junco, often commonly called a snow-bird. It came to our feeder New Year’s day last year, rummaging in the snow for seeds the other birds might have dropped from…
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Bitter Cold Brings Birds To the Feeder
Welcome to the Second Day of Winter! Well, actually, this was written on the second day of winter, but it didn’t get posted properly, and so it is now old news. But still interesting? You decide … We hit -15 this morning, prompting the dogs to call off their morning walk by the time they…
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Birds of the Bitter Cold
Temperature records fell throughout the central United States yesterday, as a cold front moved down from Canada. We dropped to -2oF, and we aren’t expected to warm up much before the weekend. We always think of our feathered friends on days like this, so I went out early to clean off the feeders. I had…
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Dark-Eyed Juncos — Evolution in Action
Once I had a fancy camera that held bird images still so that I could figure out what I was looking at, I began to learn a lot more about LBJs — Little Brown Jobbies — little birds that are around us but we really don’t pay much attention to. And one of the first…
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Birds Before the Storm
This has been such a weird year. Earlier this week, we saw a female broad-tailed hummingbird feeding on the last of a neighbor’s Rose-of-Sharon flowers. Then we had three more forest fires start in the mountains to the west. It’s October! It is time to cool off. But this morning we woke to cold temperatures…
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Hawk Nest Monitoring Begins
As many of you know, I volunteer for the Jefferson County Open Space along the Front Range of Colorado. Last year, I worked on a new-to-me program, hawk nest monitoring. The nest I watched last year seems to have been abandoned, so I moved to a new spot this year, watching Red-Tailed Hawks. So far…
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Cold Weather Birds
We woke up to 12o F (-11o C) in central Colorado — we have yet to have a significant snowfall in the foothills west of Denver. It’s been a little odd to see so many different types of winter birds coming to the feeder without snow. But they are coming! House sparrows. House sparrows were…
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Spring is coming. Really.
If we can just hold on a little longer, spring is coming. How do I know? Robins, dark-eyed juncos and rufus-sided towhees are back at the feeders. Also, as I was walking into to library this morning, I heard a crow making a weird ringing “B’Dong! B’Dong! B’Dong! B’Dong!” call. It drew a crowd as…
Amy Law, Science Geek 