Bird Blogging

One of the delights of living in the chaparral is the abundant bird life — dozens of species, ten or so of which are very common here. For instance, we have around a hundred hummingbirds visiting our feeders regularly, and about the same number of California quail.

I took these two pictures this afternoon, with two of our most common visitors. At far right is a female hummingbird on one of our feeders. I believe it’s an Anna’s Hummingbird, though it’s missing the red throat patch they usually have — perhaps it’s a juvenile. In any case, it sat unusually still for a moment, and I was able to get this quite clear photo. We have dozens and dozens of Anna’s here; they are the most common hummingbird around in the area.

The other bird is a male Lesser Goldfinch, one of a hundred or more that regularly visit our large thistle seed feeders. These little fellows aren’t much bigger than the hummingbirds, and are almost as brave (the hummers will feed happily while you’re a foot from the feeder, and with care you can get them to land on you). I can go outside while the goldfinches are feeding, and generally they’ll continue feeding if I don’t get closer than about 6 or 7 feet. This seems a little surprising in light of how hard it was to get these birds to the feeders at all — we had feeders out, full of thistle seeds, for two or three years before a single goldfinch showed up. After that, it was just days before huge numbers were crowding our feeders. We’ve had as many as 16 goldfinches on a single feeder at the same time, and it’s common for us to have all four feeders chock full of them, with many others awaiting their turn in the nearby pampas, fig tree, or liquid amber tree. One theory we have is that the goldfinches weren’t reticent to use the feeders — they simply didn’t know how they worked. And that could be, I suppose — but they certainly know now!

As usual, click on the small photos for a larger view…