By Michele Altherr
Have you ever had your day brightened by watching a carefree little bird hop about in your yard? Whether you are a casual observer or an avid birder, there is always more to learn about birds. When identifying birds, grab your binoculars and start by noticing some of its features. Try comparing its size to something you know. Notice its shape including head, tail, and beak. Check for color and special markings from head to toe. Watch for habits of behavior when it is perched, feeding, and flying. With time, voice and songs will become more familiar. Remember that males are usually more brightly colored whereas females wear more inconspicuous colors for nesting. Notice the time of year. Songbirds molt yearly, usually in the fall. With their new feathers, migratory birds head south, usually by safety of night. The stay-at-homes seek out the best local food source. After you've made all your observations, go to a bird guide and look it up.
Birds need food, water, shelter, and a safe place to hide, yet these are dwindling worldwide. You can provide for them. Birds have diverse diets, and observing their beaks will give you a clue as to what they eat. Their natural foods include insects, worms, nuts, berries, fruits and seeds. At your backyard feeder, sunflower seeds, mixed seeds, millet, peanutbutter mix, and fruits are a few treats you can try. The sound of dripping water is a magnet for birds who use it for drinking, bathing and frolicking. If your water source is three feet above ground or has a perch, the birds can watch for predators. Birds are finicky about nesting sites and manmade nesting boxes. You'll notice that many birds depend on snags - standing dead trees - for nesting sites. If you would like to entice birds to a nesting box, put the box up before the early birds arrive, and clean out old nests. Birds like wild overgrown backyards. Creating a garden with many varieties of plants provides for diverse food sources. Berry bushes (currant, hawthorn, chokecherry, and juniper) and wildflowers (sunflowers and beebalm) are good sources of food and hiding places for birds. Hazards for birds include cats, windows, and squirrels and deer that often beat them to the bird feeder. You can keep your cat indoors, paste a silhouette of a hawk on your window, and look for feeders with slippery umbrellas or cages. Birds are wonderful to watch and listen to, so go outside today and notice the birds in your backyard.
Additional Resources
In addition to the birds shown below, this website also contains the following additional pages of photographs and information about local birds.
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Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus
30 cm. Flickers are a large brownish woodpecker. The have a black bib and mustache, gray cap, and red nape (females lack the mustache). Their back is brownish with dark bars, and their chest is whitish with black spots. They have yellow under wings. Flickers have a sticky tongue that extends 2 inches beyond their bill. They feed on ants and other ground insects and also, in winter, on berries. They have two toes forward, and two toes back for vertical grip and a stiff tail used as a prop. They are often the first birds to the feeders in the morning. Its voice is a loud repeated flicker or wicka-wicka-wicka. Its preferred habitat is open country with trees; parks and large gardens. They hollow out their nests in dead trees and lay 6-8 eggs. Flickers are important in the woodland community, because they provide cavities for many hole-nesting birds. Feeder attractants are suet, peanut butter, fruits and seeds. Place nesting box over dense shrubbery and fill with sawdust or put a mirror inside opposite the door. |
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Rufous Hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus
9 - 10 cm. The male Rufous Hummingbird is the only N. American hummer with a total rufous back and copper colored throat. The female is green above with a rufous tinge on her rump and flanks, and much rufous in her tail. Their voice is an abrupt, high-pitched zeee with various thin squealing notes. Its habitat is mountain meadows and forest edges. These miniature birds are able to store up enough energy in fat to successfully migrate hundreds of miles from as far north as Alaska all the way south to Mexico. The first hummingbird to discover a food source defends it. Even after being satiated, it will perch on a nearby branch and intercept intruders in air with its angry buzzing. In a dive, they can beat their wings up to 200 times per second. You can put out a feeder in early spring, and fill it with one part sugar dissolved in 4 parts water (no honey). They consume nectar at 13 licks per second! When empty, rinse your feeder with hot water and little bit of vinegar. |
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Mountain Chickadee, Parus gambeli
13 - 15 cm. Mountain Chickadees have a black cap and bib with white cheeks and grey sides. It is the only chickadee with a white eye stripe. They are small large-headed birds that often hang upside down to pluck small insects from conifer needles. It's a fearless, inquisitive, and constantly active insect forager. Its call is a hoarse chick-a-zee-zee. It lays 7-9 white, sometimes spotted eggs in a hair- or fur-lined natural cavity or woodpecker hole. It lives in high altitude coniferous forests, but descends to lowlands in the winter. It prefers hanging, even wobbly feeders or platform and window feeders. It is attracted by oil sunflower seeds, suet, and peanut butter. |
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Pygmy Nuthatch, Sitta pygmaea
10 - 11 cm. The Pygmy Nuthatch is bluish gray above with a gray-brown cap terminated by an indistinct black eye line; faint white smudge at base of nape; creamy white below. They usually occur in flocks and live in ponderosa pine forests with an undergrowth of bunch grass. Their name comes from "nut-hack", based on their habit of sticking seed in bark and hacking it with their bill. Nuthatches have sharp claws for hopping upside down and nabbing insects overlooked by other birds. It lays 5-9 white eggs, with reddish-brown speckles, in a nest about 12 - 25 feet from the ground and made of a quantity of soft material, often vegetable down, amassed in the cavity of a dead pine. Easily attracted by sunflower seeds, nuts and suet. Offer it a bark covered house 4x4x10" placed high on tree trunk. It's center hole should be 1 1/4"in diameter and 7 1/2 " above the floor. |
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Yellow-rumped Warbler, Dendroica coronata
13 - 15 cm. The male breeding Yellow-rumped Warbler, also known as "Audubon's Warbler", is a dull bluish above streaked with black, and its breast and flanks are blackish. It also has a yellow throat and large white patches in its folded wings. This warbler inhabits coniferous and mixed forests. They sing from the high canopy of the forest. Its song is a colorless buzzy warble with a sharp chek. The birds constantly chirp a "contact call" that keeps the flock together. It is widespread during migration and in winter. It lays 4 or 5 white eggs spotted and splotched with brown in a conifer tree in a bulky nest of twigs and rootlets lined with hair and feathers. |
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Spotted Towhee, Pipilo erythrophthalmus
18 - 22 cm. The male Spotted Towhee has a black hood, back, and wings, with white wing bars and spots. The tail is black with white edging on the outer feathers. Its breast and belly are white with bright rufous sides. The female has the same pattern, but she is brown where the male is black. Both sexes have red eyes. the towhee prefers forest edges. It is a ground feeder and needs a nearby haven of a thicket or underbrush. They scratch the ground for insects in a dance pattern named the "Towhee Shuffle", and they similarly rummage for seeds at platform feeders. They may stay all year in dense unkempt gardens. It lays 3 - 6 white eggs, with reddish-brown and lilac spots, in a loose cup nest near the ground in a dense bush such as cedar or juniper. Its latin name means "red-eyed chirper". Its song varies with a few introductory notes and usually ending with a long trill, such as drink-your-teeaaa or to-wheeee. They are attracted by millet, sunflower seed, cracked corn, thistle seeds, and suet. |
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Dark-eyed Junco, Junco hyemalis
13 - 16 cm. The Dark-eyed Junco shows much geographical variation in color. The variety of the southern Rockys is grey all over with a reddish-brown back for both the male and female. It is a lively territorial bird. It is a ground dweller that feeds on seeds and small fruits in clearings of the coniferous forest. Juncos are commonly called "Snowbirds" because they herald winter and are often seen feeding on snow covered berry bushes and grasses. They travel in flocks with one leader. Members of a flock keep in touch with a constantly calling tsick or tchet. They lay 3 - 6 bluish or greenish eggs, with variegated blotches in a compact nest of rootlets, shreds of bark, twigs and mosses, lined with grasses and hair, placed on the ground protected by a rock ledge, a mud bank, tufts of weeds or a fallen log. They prefer eating seeds spilled on the ground: white proso millet, red proso millet, and cracked corn. They enjoy gardens gone to seed and having water nearby. |
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Turkey Vulture, Cathartes aura
64 -81 cm. Wings 1.8 m. This eagle size vulture is one of three vulture species that breeds in North America. In flight, the long wings are held upward in a wide shallow V. Their flight feathers are silvery below and their tail is long. All vultures have bare heads which prevents their feathers from being fouled when feeding on carrion. The Turkey Vulture's small bare head is reddish, but gray in immature birds. It can coast for hours, swaying from side to side, as it searches for carcasses. As they soar, vultures ride columns of warm air called thermals to save energy as they cover miles of territory. They migrate north toward Canada to breed. The Turkey Vulture is usually silent, but it may hiss or grunt while feeding or at the nest. They lay two whitish eggs, heavily marked with dark brown and placed without a nest or lining in a rock crevice, hollow dead tree or fallen log. Know as the buzzard of the west, these birds are important to the ecosystem because they scavenge and clean up what others have left behind. |
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Stellar's Jay, Cyanocitta stelleri
30 - 34 cm. This is the only western jay with a crested head which is black and melds into a blue body. Rocky Mountain varieties have white eyebrows. Its call is a raucous shack-shack-shack or chook-chook-chook voice. It will mimic the voice of hawks and other birds. It lives in coniferous forests; pine and oak forests. It lays 3-5 spotted greenish eggs in a well hidden neat twiggy bowl lined with small roots and fibers. Jays are omnivores and quickly become accustomed to eating the crumbs left around campsites and picnic areas. Feeder attractions are peanuts, suet, cracked corn, peanut butter and sunflower seeds. |
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