One of the best things Anne and I have done since we moved here was to set up a bird feeding station that is visible from the kitchen window. Like most things, it wasn’t planned; it just evolved. During the winter of 2009, the snow cover was pretty thick and the birds were starving. We bought a bag of bird seed and spent a couple of months tossing handfuls of seed onto the ground from the front porch. The snow finally melted, but the birds stayed.

After, we bought a basic feeder and hung it from a cane on the edge of the bamboo grove. To one side of the bamboo is the Dead Tree, and to the other side is a row of hemlocks and a couple of large chinkapin (chinquapin) oaks. This inadvertently turned out to be the ideal arrangement for every type of bird found in southeastern Wythe County.

This page is intended to be the beginning of a pictorial reference of many of those birds, broken down by season. They were taken at different times of the day with two different cameras. I will continue to add to and refine the page as I get new and better pictures. For detailed information about the birds shown on this page, I recommend the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.

Spring Birds

the view from the front porch

brown-headed cowbird (pair)

downy woodpecker (male)

downy woodpecker (female)

mourning dove

northern cardinal (female)

northern cardinal (male)

house finch (pair)

american goldfinch (male)

american goldfinch (female)

tufted titmouse and american gold finch