The Birds of 2021
2021 is here at last! OK, I know it's been 2021 for 5 whole months. But the necessity of rebuilding this site just so that I could post new pictures has meant that months have gone by since my last post.
This page is devoted to the birds of 2021. Below you will find pictorial links to pages that are organized by the month, rather than by the species. There will be some exceptions: bluebirds, phoebes and ospreys will have their own pages because the first two are nesting on or near our house, and the ospreys are THE ospreys of River Road and they MUST have their own page!
The pictures in these galleries are in chronological order.
The osprey, phoebe, and bluebird pages now are live.
April 2021
The Phoebe Page
The Ospreys of 2021
Bluebirds
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
Here are the birds of June. Not featuring before (in 2021) are Cedar Waxwings which - unusually - have made a few visits to our backyard. There are several pictures here of Red-eyed Vireo - at least one of these is pictured in our trees where it was engaged in a conflict over space with a pair of phoebes! A small turtle tried to dig a hole in our "lawn" but we do not know if it was successful. A larger turtle sticks its neck out.
Other rare visitors to our trees (but not the the neighborhood) was a female red-winged blackbird and a male Baltimore Oriole.
The pine warbler that featured in earlier months is back. We hear it just about every day but it is so hard to see, since it spends its time mostly out of sight in the tree tops where it warbles (what else would it do!) incessantly.
There is one photograph of a family of young mallards. This is, so far, the only time I have seen them.
We have a white-winged starling visiting our feeding station nearly every day. It's not a rare sub-species of starling, just one in which the normal pigmentation did not work!
And last, we have a not so rare sighting of the greater yellow rubber ducky. (We have also seen the much smaller lesser yellow rubber ducky, but no pictures of that one yet, or ever!)
Late May 2021
The stars of this gallery for late May are the Baltimore Orioles. My earliest picture of these birds is from May 20, 2021. At this time of year they announce their return with a loud and distinctive song.
Also here are the first new geese of 2021. There do not seem as many goslings this year as there have been in prior years. I have seen only three small families (most years have more large families). No doubt they will soon be seen in their larger creches.
New to this page are pictures of a vireo (most likely a red-eyed) and male and female American Redstarts. This does not mean they just arrived, only that these are my first pictures this year. I've been hearing them for some time but they are not easily seen - especially the Redstarts which like to hide in the more dense bushes along River Road. I know they are here from their thin reedy call. The second to last picture in this gallery is an immature male redstart.
You can also see a yellow-bellied sapsucker trying to extract sap from a metal signpost. It continued hammering away in vain for quite some time before giving up and flying off to a non-metallic tree!
Early May 2021
We begin this gallery with a little brown bird (a sparrow of some sort) followed by some pictures of a solitary loon on Goose Bay. Loons are infrequent visitors, usually just passing through. (I have heard that there is a family of loons on the pond but I have not seen any evidence myself and this single loon is the only time this spring I have seen one of these magnificent birds.)
Two more pictures of the pine warbler (I think) are here. And then comes several pictures of an aggressive and very noisy wren. Both it and a tree swallow wanted the nest box you see pictured (but neither ended up getting it - that's a story for another page coming soon).
The yellow warblers are back! Some pictures of a yellow warbler appear below. Warblers are common around here in the summer but hard to see as, for the most part, they don't like to show themselves. The best time to see them is soon after they return when they are busy establishing territory and relationships with other warblers.
The gray catbird is another returnee. Catbirds are so named for the mewling sound they make that is somewhat reminiscent of the sounds that cats make from time to time. However, catbirds have a far greater range of song than just that cat-like sound and can be quite entertaining as they run through their extensive repertoire.
The Eastern Kingbirds also have returned for a summer here in Norwood. Kingbirds are a medium sized flycatcher and are featured elsewhere on this web site.
A special mention to the returning bluebirds (hint: the one shown here is not very blue). We will soon open a special page for bluebirds.
And the last of the new returnees this month is the rose-breasted grosbeak.
April 2021
Two species of duck that spend a short time in Norwood on their way to somewhere else are the buffleheads and ring-necked ducks featured in the early part of this gallery. The background picture for this page (also in the gallery immediately below) is a lucky shot of a male bufflehead diving. (That photograph made NCPR Photo of the Day.) Buffleheads belong to the group of diving ducks (as opposed to mallards, for example, that are part of the group of dabbling ducks that don't dive).
Also back are various kinds of sparrow (seen here are chipping, song and white-throated sparrows - although in my opinion the latter should be named "yellow-eyebrowed sparrows").
The juncos are still here but they will leave soon.
There is a picture here of a pair of northern flickers (a kind of woodpecker that spends most of its feeding time on the ground and does not, as far as I can tell, hammer on trees to get insects). Other woodpeckers shown in this gallery are a female hairy woodpecker, a downy, and a male yellow-bellied sapsucker. The sapsucker is a summer visitor.
A brand new bird for me and for our back yard is the pine warbler - here seen sitting on arm of our feeding pole. (At least, my best guess is that it is a pine warbler.) I hear what I think is that bird (or another of its kind) in the trees nearly every day but I so rarely am able to actually see it - most of the time it is high up among the pine needles and quite invisible. There will be some more pictures of that bird coming in May. I only saw it on or around the feeding station when there was snow on the ground and in the trees.
Near the end of this gallery are pictures of purple finches - now back in the North Country, and a pair of brown-headed cowbirds. Cowbirds are parasitic breeders; they lay their eggs in the nests of other species!
March 2021
March sees the birds of summer starting to return. The geese came back, as did some Juncos. The Juncos are on their way elsewhere and stay here for a few weeks in spring and fall. (They are not the only species to be spring and fall visitors as we shall see in April.)
Two turkeys took a walk though our backyard. (I actually interrupted a Zoom meeting in order to get those pictures. It's not every day that one sees turkeys in one's backyard, but it is everyday that one is on Zoom these days, at least for me it is!)
To cap off the month, the female Osprey returned a few days before her mate (or, more accurately, a few days before I saw him). They are back early this year, compared to last year!
February 2021
The February 2021 gallery features the little birds that live here year round dealing with the cold wind and snow. The redpolls stayed for a while longer. For them, this is the deep south! There is a flock of pigeons that hangs near the north end of this segment of River Road. I don't often manage to get good pictures of them in flight but this time I was successful. Near the end of this gallery is a picture of 4 deer (only 3 in the picture) that had spent the night sleeping in the snow of our back yard!
January 2021
The winter of 2020-2021 was an odd one. No snow to stay until the very end of 2020. The first two pictures in this gallery actually date from the last days of 2020 when there was no snow to stay. It wasn't until the new year that the snow stayed for a while. In this gallery, besides the usual winter residents, are some redpolls. A flock of 20 or so visited River Road for a few days.
