Goldfinches eating seeds from backyard wild evening primrose!

Yay!

Sparrows galore; millet goes fast!

So fun.  Seeing lots of house sparrows, chipping sparrows (feeding a young'un), and song sparrows.  The occasional goldfinches (they're not as fond as the platform feeder, so not getting tons like I did last year, but too bad so sad).  The millet is going like gangbusters.

So many birds after the storms! Including chipping sparrow!

Several periods of intense rain today, in between which the birds were excited to visit.  At one point, there was a cardinal, a house sparrow, a song sparrow, and two goldfinches!  And at another time there was a chipping sparrow sharing time with a goldfinch.  A song sparrow was quite territorial later, driving away the gold finches.

Great to have today's rain, really needed it.

Birds a-plenty! Goldfinches, house sparrows, cardinals, song sparrows

Fun!  Quite a few visits throughout the day these days.

Removed the new fine-mesh feeder yesterday because the goldfinches had stopped using it and they seemed to actually prefer the big tray.

So, now it's back to the small millet-only tray on one side, and the big tray on the other side offering sunflower chips (fine but passed through mesh first to reduce dust on ground), peanut pieces, millet, and nutrisaff.  I have the green soft mesh seed-catcher tucked right up underneath the big tray to catch the dust and it seems to be working great.

Yesterday evening I put the bird bath back out, saw one taker so far.

Goldfinches have discovered the new mesh feeder; house sparrow visited platform; merlin heard from house

Saw three goldfinches at once this evening. 

A house sparrow visited the platform briefly.

Also, this evening is the second or third time I heard the distinctive calls of a merlin, from the house.  Didn't sound super close by, but, close enough.

Song sparrow, goldfinch

So far, visitors to the birdfeeder, who I've seen, are the song sparrow and goldfinch.

Goldfinch eating last year's wild evening primrose seeds

Neat!  Glad I left them in place over the winter.

Goldfinches much fewer these days, but still frequent visitors; very occasional song sparrows, that's it

To really prevent food from falling to the ground (re: rat), and while waiting for the large seed catcher tray to arrive, I removed all of the mesh feeders that the goldfinches really loved, and replaced them with hopper-style feeders with openings at the bottom only, which are working well with the new fine sunflower chips I picked up.

The hordes of goldfinches had already been much smaller starting on Sunday I think (prior to then it wasn't out of the ordinary to count as many as 15 goldfinches in the yard and eating on the primrose/etc. outside the yard), which I think is due to removing the main feeder because it was raining and the weather dome hasn't arrived yet, so I don't think it was due to the above changes, but, we'll see if the masses come back.  

I do still see goldfinches, as many as 4 or 5 at a time, occasionally throughout the day.

Still many goldfinches; occasional song sparrows; no chipping sparrows anymore

^^^

Goldfinch article -- very detailed

 https://www.hww.ca/en/wildlife/birds/american-goldfinch.html

Goldfinches eating seeds from the Ivory Silk Lilac tree out front!

Wow, the goldfinches are sure having a party around here these days -- five different foods inside or in front of my yard!

- lilac tree seeds

- wild primrose seeds

- purple coneflower seeds

- sunflower seeds from the one remaining plant

- sunflower seeds from the feeder

Goldfinches eating purple coneflower

(The perennial outside the fence)

Golfinches galore; and song sparrows, house sparrow (female), and chickadee

6 goldfinches in the yard all at the same time!

And on another occasion, a bunch of goldfinches, and a song sparrow, and a chickadee all at the same time!

So fun.

I'm assuming there's also a female house sparrow, but seeing only one at a time, sometimes two maybe, and no males, so I'm not totally sure if these are house sparrows.

Baby goldfinches! Song sparrow! Other sparrow!

Definitely saw a song sparrow and some other kind of sparrow (white throated maybe? didn't get a good look) eating the millet!

And 3 baby goldfinches came by with their parent(s)!  Brown rather than yellow, and being fed.

Oh and there was a flock of some kind of small bird (didn't see white in flight, so don't think they were juncos) just down the sidewalk this morning!

Fun!  But bummer I'm having to spend 12 hours a day upstairs working!

Goldfinch eating wild evening primrose seeds!

Cool!  The wild evening primrose that sprung up this year outside the fence is now going to seed, and several times today I saw a goldfinch eating the seeds!  Google confirms this is very much to be expected.  Kept some seeds today and wow, sooooo many seeds from just one pod.

I was going to chop it down, until seeing the goldfinch.  So, it will stay!

Goldfinches are back today, but still no sparrows

No idea why the goldfinches came back today, as it's still very hot and humid.

Tray suspended under sunflower seed feeder working on goldfinches' sloppy eating

The goldfinches are so darn messy.  Even though the sunflower seeds are shelled, they seem to be interested in only one bite from each and they toss their rejected portions onto the ground.  So, I now have a clear plastic pot tray thing (nice and big, a few dollars at Ritchie's) hanging under the sunflower seed feeder.  So far so good, it really seems to be catching pretty much everything, and the sparrows come along and happily eat the stuff that falls onto the tray.

Sightings of the rat(s) are much fewer now that the sunflower heads from the mammoths are gone.  The presence of the ground cherries is I'm hoping the only thing keeping them here, plus the shelter they've taken under the kitchen step and in the compost bin.

So many birds! My birdfeeder dream come true

Oh wow this is so much fun!  So many birds coming to the feeder these days.  They obviously aren't bothered by its new spot.

Seeing these -- in various combinations too which is even more fun:

- song sparrows (eating more sunflowers now, bulking up for winter?)

- chipping sparrows with young (eating mostly millet)

- goldfinches (sunflowers of course)

- chickadees (noticed them starting today -- hadn't seen them since several months, maybe they didn't like it against the wall) (sunflower seeds)

- house sparrows (occasionally, and only one at a time)

Many goldfinches visiting; also song sparrows and chipping sparrows, with the occasional house sparrow

The goldfinches are starting to really get into the ripening sunflower heads, which is great especially since I'm not harvesting any myself.

Goldfinch ate seeds from front-of-fence "daycare" sunflower!

^^^