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Bluebirds and New Visitors

Unfortunately, I haven't seen any bluebirds lately. I'm still putting out live mealworms but I only see house wrens and the occasional chickadee on the feeder.

I have seen two new visitors to my backyard in the last few days. House wrens are small brown birds with a loud singing voice and the other day I saw a larger brown bird chasing what I believed was a house wren. I didn't think much of it until the larger brown bird landed on the mealworm feeder.

So I got my binoculars and watched the feeder and got a good look at the larger brown bird. It looked very similar to the house wren just bigger and with a lighter stripe of cream/yellow through it's eye. My mom mentioned she saw a Carolina wren on her feeder and this little guy matched her description.


If they've been around my yard, I didn't notice them before but it clearly has a cream strip over it's eye, which the house wren lacks and it's belly was a nice buttery yellow color.

I've lived at his house for 18 years and I've never seen bluebirds until this year and there was one other visitor I've seen once in 18 years, which was just a few years ago in my yard. Until this year.

I have a serviceberry bush in my back yard and this year, it seems like there's a lot of berries on it, which are now turning red. I was sitting on my back porch and saw several robins (adults) and a few juvenile robins playing in the tree no doubt stuffing themselves on berries. Robins are also distinctive with gray tops and orangey chests but I noticed two other birds that didn't have those colors and were actually a lot harder to see. So when I looked with binoculars, I saw a brown gray/yellowish colored bird with a black strip in the eye area and I knew what kind of bird it was. A pair of cedar waxwings.

The pair of waxwings kept landing in one of the pines next to my house and I got some really good photos of them. The sun was out the sky was blue. Perfect. Hopefully these guys will make a nest in the pine tree and stick around for the summer.



I've also taken down my regular bird feeder. The house sparrows are a noisy, messy menace and it's been a lot nicer to just have the finch, hummingbird and the mealworm feeders up. The finch feeder has goldfinches and house finches and the mealworm feeders has wrens and bluebirds. Guess I'll have to put out some fruit and see if the waxwings will stick around for oranges.












































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