Posted on 12/16/2014 2:52:17 PM PST by saminfl
I live in the Florida panhandle. I have a couple of bird feeders in my yard and I keep them filled. For the last few weeks, I haven't had to add any food. It dawned on me that there are no birds in my yard anymore. I used to have many cardinals along with jays, doves, woodpeckers and all the little ones I am not smart enough to identify.
I thought it was just me, but I had dinner with two of my neighbors the other night and they brought up the subject asking where the birds have gone.
Have any Freepers noticed their birds are missing?
Yeah, we have them in Alexandria, VA.
My hunch is that your unidentified striped sparrow is a white-crowned sparrow.
This time of year, hundreds of thousands of them overwinter throughout the western states.
The City of Key West claims to have 40,000 outdoor cats—a major destination for migrating songbirds! In the Florida Keys, I visit a friend who has a “outdoor” cat; invariably, the cat kills a bird each time I visit. One day, her cat presented us with a warm, but dead, Cardinal. An hour later, my friend and I were watching a lizard that was dining on fire ants. “Remarkable”, we thought—then her cat came over and killed it, too! :(
They were finches, not sparrows.
I have heard that a spotted towhee and varied thrush have been spotted in the area, so I eagerly await their appearance at my feeder.
Just saw some varied thrushes in Mendocino County (Calif) last week while on vacation. What a great yard bird!
And glad you solved your bird mystery.
Seem to be about the same number here in south Jersey, although it usually takes them awhile to come back to the feeder as the weather turns colder in the late fall....
I’ve got lots of rattlesnakes and moccasins and plenty of songbirds too.
I’ve got lots of rattlesnakes and moccasins and plenty of songbirds too.
The worst birdkillers are rats- snakes probably kill way more rats than birds.
I can flip you a few birds if you need. :)
You are offering a food source 3x a day! Plus a warm house.
Either stop feeding the bird sooooo much, really...they’ll be fine or turn the heat off in the house.
Judging by the date you most likely have a coopers or sharp shin hawk visiting you on migration. I’m to your south and around the same time I had a couple of them, inexperienced ones, mobbing my aviary- boy was one surprised when he dived at a conure and I popped up instead when my birds let rip the alarms calls- I had been stooped over inside scooping feed for my birds. It’s seasonal.
They’ve been back for the last couple of weeks.
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