Favorite Backyard Garden Birds?

[Taiji]

I wish I had my camera when they were falling flat on their backs.

That made me LOL.

Next thing you know they'll be trying to fly or something.

[A Happy Seedling]

Never seen these ones fly...
They're too fat.
Sumo doves?
O.O

[Gary350]

Birds are my best friends they eat all the bugs in my garden. I never spray for bugs. I have 25 bird houses. I like wrens best they sing none stop all day and eat 2 times their body weight in bugs every day. I build special bird houses for my wrens.

[A Happy Seedling]

Birds are my best friends they eat all the bugs in my garden. I never spray for bugs. I have 25 bird houses. I like wrens best they sing none stop all day and eat 2 times their body weight in bugs every day. I build special bird houses for my wrens.

Adorable!

[HoneyBerry]

A male house wren builds a dozen nests in the Spring and then shows off his handy work to the female. The female chooses the nest. Often the female tears apart the nest and then builds a new nest. Persnickity, those little female wrens.

[j3707]

Right now my favorite are the Robins - they just came back for spring! I can hear them all over in the early morning.

[imafan26]

I saw a cattle egret poking around my front yard looking for bugs or maybe a lizard.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Cattle_Egret/id

[catgrass]

I counted about 23 cardinals at my feeders yesterday evening. A few blackbirds and some "tweety birds". The cat was mesmerized!

[A Happy Seedling]

23?! Our cardinals come in pairs. Right now we have 2 pairs of mates living on our property somewhere in the bushes behind our house, and 1 pair that visits sometimes and lives in the woods.

[applestar]

Yep, same here, until they have their babies. -- then it's usually the babies, the male, and the female, too... Though I think it's the male that is more diligent and continue to feed them until fledging. Sometimes, after that, I see the siblings staying together for a while.

They usually have at least two broods, maybe three? during the season and are CONSTANTLY looking for baby food (worms and bugs) in the garden.

[A Happy Seedling]

Yep, same here, until they have their babies. -- then it's usually the babies, the male, and the female, too... Though I think it's the male that is more diligent and continue to feed them until fledging. Sometimes, after that, I see the siblings staying together for a while.

They usually have at least two broods, maybe three? during the season and are CONSTANTLY looking for baby food (worms and bugs) in the garden.

Sounds great! After and during breeding season we tend to still have pairs, male/female or otherwise; the siblings pair up and stick with each other after leaving their parents. I saw a joyful family reunion of 2 female juveniles and their parents ~2 weeks after the females left their nests.
After the siblings grow up and get mates, they STILL stick around each other (in-laws of the animal world ) to form groups of four; the original two siblings and the mates they took. Sometimes the chicks from an earlier brood, after leaving the nest "for good," come back to their old nest and help out their parents when they are raising a new brood. Usually the females do this, only a few males ever return to their parents' nest for whatever reason.
Good to have that older sister around...
After the juveniles from the early brood, which helped out the parents with the next brood, become adults, sometimes the younger ones that the early birds (lol) raised will seek them out and group with them too. They seem to recognize each other; maybe the little ones imprinted on the juveniles helping out as well as on the parents.
When there are clutches of eggs with more than two siblings in one brood, all siblings will stay around each other. Yes, even when they get mates. This probably has something to do with safety in numbers (and maybe love for their siblings, not to mention trying to steal Sis's boyfriend!)

This is just what happens with my cardinals. Yours are probably different.

~AHS

[ButterflyLady29]

I had a Pileated woodpecker in the tree in my back yard a couple days ago. It hung around and pecked at the tree a little bit, paused long enough for just one shot with the good camera, then took off. Although this is a pretty wooded area it's not a common feeder bird here.

Another interesting thing I saw over the weekend were the bees. They were thick in the sunflower seeds in the feeder. I had to take the top off to release a bee that had apparently burrowed from the feeding port up through the seed to the open area inside. She couldn't find her way out and kept trying and trying to fly out the mesh. Once she realized the top was open she took off.

[Taiji]

Marlin, your bluebirds are such a bright blue compared to mine! Mine are western bluebirds, would yours be eastern? Your photo makes me want to put up some birdhouses!

[LIcenter]

The Bluebird is our state bird. Sixty two years living in NY, I Have never seen one as yet.

[imafan26]

You have interesting birds. Thanks for the pictures. I will probably only see most of these birds in pictures. Sadly, even our native birds are so rare and dependent on specific native plants for food that most of them won't be seen in home gardens. All I see are sparrows (not as many now), bulbuls (too many), cattle egret (imported by the plantation), finches (pets people deliberately let go), parrots (also escaped or released pets), Sharma (rare, and has a beautiful song), cardinals, great northern cardinals, golden plover (they migrate from the Aleutions every winter), occasionally a pheasant, native white owl (very rare I have only seen it twice on the Big Island's Parker ranch, mynah, spotted neck doves, small grey dove, mejiro (Japanese white eye), pigeons, and feral chickens.