Morning Walk Highlights

Fall is coming to an end! Most of the trees have lost their leaves though a few aren’t quite there yet. We’ve been seeing all of the same common birds nearly every day along with a handful of less common species. We haven’t seen any new species since the beginning of the month.

We’ve been seeing Dark-Eyed Juncos nearly every day now! They seem to be the most common of the species that we’ve seen which migrate here for the winter.

The White-Throated Sparrows are another species that we see almost every day, though perhaps not as often as the Dark-Eyed Juncos. We recently learned that a song we’ve been hearing since earlier this year is from this species! We heard it during spring and occasionally during the summer but are frequently hearing them sing now in the fall.

The House Sparrows are still the most numerous of all the birds that we see. They are absolutely everywhere! We often see large numbers of them feeding together on specific plants as well as in the grass.

We’ve been seeing more Downy Woodpeckers than we did in the past even though they are a year-round species here. This is probably because the trees are now mostly without leaves, making them easier to spot. They’re typically moving quickly along branches, flying to new places every once in awhile.

During the spring and summer, we saw American Goldfinches everywhere. But now in fall, they are much harder to find. We don’t hear them nearly as often and we rarely see them. Their winter colors are also rather drab so they are not nearly as obvious as when they are bright yellow. The other day, we saw a few of them feeding on pine cones. The most we’ve seen in awhile!

For awhile, American Robins were hard to find. But we’re seeing them everywhere once again! We typically see them perched in trees, or flying around in groups. Sometimes, we see them feeding in the grass but not like earlier in the year when we’d see them hunting worms everywhere.

The Northern Cardinals are still pretty common. We typically see them every day, though often just one or two. We still sometimes hear them without being able to find them.

Not too long ago, it seemed every day we were seeing Blue Jays flying around collecting acorns and taking them to their hiding spots. Recently, we haven’t been seeing them doing so as often but still sometimes see one carrying acorns. We also don’t see as many flying around as we did previously.

We’ve been seeing more and more hawks recently! This is almost certainly because there are almost no leaves left on the trees making them much easier to spot. In the last few days, we’ve seen Red-Shouldered, Red-Tailed, and Cooper’s Hawks.

We got lucky the other day and spotted a male and a female Northern Flicker. They were looking for insects on a tree. We spotted them when a number of European Starlings flew by and we noticed a bird that had some white color. That led us to find the two Northern Flickers!

Recently, we saw a Great Blue Heron land on a roof! It is our first time seeing one of these large birds do that!

We probably see as many Carolina Wrens now as we have during any other time of the year. We usually only see one at a time but recently we saw a number of them flying from place to place. They’re definitely one of the loudest birds out there, especially given their tiny size!

Tufted Titmice have never been a species that we see very often. We’ve seen them twice this week which is pretty good!

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