Backyard Birds: American Goldfinch

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American Goldfinch: The American Goldfinches are songbirds found throughout the United States in riparian areas, woodlands, orchards, weedy fields, agricultural lands, gardens and parks. The males’ bright yellow and black plumage makes them very recognized at the bird feeder. Females are brownish yellow with brownish black wings with white streaks; both are identifiable by their short conical bills and short notched tail. They are year-round residents west of the Cascades in the interior valleys. In the wild they eat sunflower seeds, thistle, asters, grasses, and tree seeds of alder, birch, western red cedar and elm. At the feeder they prefer sunflower seeds and nyjer thistle seeds.

Photo by  Mdf, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

Garden Poster

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The Untended Garden in March!

Excuse the weeds, but the bumbles bees like them.

~Garden and Poster by Goly Ostovar, AGC Member

Backyard Birds: Lesser Goldfinch

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Lesser Goldfinch: Lesser Goldfinches are in great abundance in the Rogue Valley where they are year-around residents. Lesser Goldfinches forage on grains and seeds so they are often seen in weedy fields, steam side trees, bushy thickets by open fields and in the treetops by open areas. Their habitat is lower valleys to high in the mountains. They are very common in the suburbs during the winter when they migrate to lower elevations for food. Lesser Goldfinches are regular visitors to backyard feeders where they eat black oil sunflowers seeds, hulled sunflower seeds, nyjar thistle seeds and suet.

Lesser Goldfinch, male

Photo by Richard Griffin, Flickr

Backyard Birds: Chestnut-backed Chickadee

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Chestnut-backed Chickadees:  These birds frequent backyard bird feeders regularly where they eat black oil sunflower seed, hulled sunflowers seeds, suet, nyjar seeds and some fruit, but 65% of their diet is made up of insects and other arthropods, including aphids, caterpillars, spiders, leafhoppers, tiny scale insects and wasps. Chestnut-back Chickadees are found up and down the West Coast and in the Pacific Northwest. Their habitat is dense wet coniferous forests of Douglas firs, Monterey pine, Ponderosa pine, Sugar pines, White firs, Incense-cedar and Redwoods. But, while these social noisy little birds prefer dark wet forests they have moved into cities where they utilize stands of willows and alder trees along streams, madrone trees, shrubbery along the edges of oak woodlands and ornamental shrubs in parks and gardens.

Photo by Kathy Munsel, ODFW https://myodfw.com/wildlife-viewing/species/chickadees-and-nuthatches

Article by: Carlotta Lucas, AGC Member

Backyard Birds: Brown Creeper

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Brown Creeper:  This tiny woodland bird eats mostly insects, but in winter at a backyard feeder they will eat suet, peanut butter, and occasionally sunflower seeds and corn. During the breeding season, Brown Creepers eat a long list of insects and their larvae. This includes stinkbugs, fruit flies, gnats, beetles, weevils, bark beetle, butterflies, moths, lacewings, caddisflies, scale insects, leafhoppers, katydids, flat-bugs, plant lice, ants, and sawflies along with spiders, spider eggs. Brown creepers are found throughout Oregon in forested areas. They use large conifer forests for foraging and breeding, but they need dead trees for nesting, because they build a hammock-like nest behind a flap of dead bark.

 

Photo credit: Mdf, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia