Earliest Ever Red-wing Blackbirds

Most years, I'm on the lookout for red-winged blackbirds--scanning the roadsides where the habitat is right.  This year, I hadn't even begun that spring tradition.  While observing and counting birds in our backyard for the Great Backyard Bird Count, I was surprised to see not only one, but soon two male redwings show up the fourth and final day of the count! :)

 I have never seen them this early.  I even searched back into the archives of this blog--the closest thing that I have to a gardening journal...although they seem to arrive more often than not around mid-March, I have seen them later...and as early as the 4th of March one year...but February is new to me.  Even after reading posts on Facebook of a friend who had already seen them, I was expecting a to have to wait a bit for them to get from South-Western PA to North Eastern PA.  Let's hope that they are bringing an early spring with them.

Increasing Numbers?

Somehow I remembered the Great Backyard Bird Count was over the Presidents' Day weekend.  I compiled my lists each day, and I even managed to take a few pictures.

Comparing past years, it seems that I normally counted between 1 and 4 goldfinch in our yard (at least during the window that I was counting); this year, I had a difficult time counting them all!  I settled on 28, but there could easily have been more.  I'm not saying that my two acres is enough to support all of the birds that come for the seed I put out, but, I am happy to see the numbers going up.

In addition to the goldfinches, there were several more blue jays...and a grand total of 39 mourning doves!!!