Backyard birdwatching...

So a couple days ago I finally put up a couple bird feeders in my backyard. For some reason, this has taken me quite a while, with all of the joys of home owning. It seems like every time I would go to buy one, I would get sidetracked and buy something that the house really "needed." Well, as a bird geek, this was a necessity.

After a trip to Lowes, I came home with my new feeders, and a huge bag of Black Oil sunflower seeds, and searched around for the perfect location. I ended up settling on hanging these up on the back corner of my garage, which is conveniently right outside our dining room window. This location also gave me a few other vantage points in different rooms in the house. It is always good to have options and different angles when trying to identify birds. So with the feeders in place, now all I could do was wait and see if anything would show up.

The next day, to my surprise, quite a few birds were hanging out at the new feeders. I definitely did not expect any birds to show up on the first day of being there. The first bird to show up was a single Tufted Titmouse, which was there and gone so quickly that my daughter did not even see it. I thought that would be it for the day. I was completely wrong. As the day progressed, 11 different species decided to show up. They were:

-European Starling
-House Finch
-House Sparrow
-Carolina Chickadee
-Tufted Titmouse
-Red Bellied Woodpecker
-Downy Woodpecker
-Blue Jay
-Carolina Wren
-Northern Cardinal
-Pileated Woodpecker

The Pileated Woodpecker was quite the shocker. It flew in at one point in the evening, while my daughter and I were watching, and I yelled in excitement, which startled the bird away. One of my favorite birds, and I did not expect it to show up in my back yard!

I'm not sure why it took me so long to hang up a couple bird feeders, but I am very glad that I did. This is a very easy way for me to get back into birdwatching, with very little difficulty. It is also a great way to share the joy of birdwatching with my daughter, which hopefully she will be out in the woods with me once the weather gets warmer. I would suggest anyone somewhat interested in birds to hang up a bird feeder just to see what shows up in your own backyard!