For the Birds... and Squirrels

I put up a bird feeder in the back yard last night at about 9pm. The grey squirrels have been pigging out for most of the day. I'm trying to keep mental notes of distinguishing characteristics for each of the seven plus squirrels, and so far I'm fairly confident I've got two down pat. One of the two is a larger squirrel I'm calling Red, who has a greater predominance of red-tinted fir on his head and back. The other is Britches, who has longish black patches of fir on the hind quarters. Aside from these two, I may be able to distinguish at least one other by physical characteristics, as I noticed that one squirrel may be a bit stockier/fluffier around the head and neck. As far as I can tell, the rest may need to be identified by behavior characteristics, which takes a little longer to sleuth out.

Right around 11am, I noticed a bunch of songbirds gathering in the treetops around the back yard. The crows were very vocal around the property just before and during this time period, which causes me to think they may have been advertising the location to the local inhabitants, and/or hoping for a show. The first brave soul to land on the feeder was a tufted titmouse. Thereafter I left the window for a while so as not to be a spook, but saw chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, pileated woodpecker, downy woodpeckers, juncos and a few other unidentifieds flitting all around the house. Such a treat to be in the presence of birds.

The main intention behind installing the bird feeder is to try to instill some nature awareness in my nephew and niece. At four and eight, they are ripe to receive this kind of information. My follow-up project to the feeder will be to create a "bird board" where the kids and adults can record bird observations. Once that's in place, I'll set us up with a household eBird account so we can easily keep an ongoing record of our sightings.