Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow . . . and then snow some more . . .

And it did. Flurries began to fall Sunday evening, and fell steadily throughout the day – for most of us – and into the night on Monday. A wrap-around northwesterly flow, as the storm moved into Atlantic Canada, produced yet more light snow for Tuesday morning. All in all, 7 to 11 inches fell across the area.

Today, with snow still falling this morning, the agenda was simple:
1) Clear driveway.
2) Snowshoe with Sasha at Hedgehog Mountain Park (although nearly devoid of birds, it was a lovely winter wonderland nonetheless)
3) More feederwatching, with a hot cup of tea.

It was a good couple of days to be feederwatching. At our Pownal home, the feeder bird activity was heavier than usual, with some new arrivals as well. Two American Tree Sparrows arrived today, our Dark-eyed Junco count grew from 2 to 4, and our Mourning Dove flock increased to 10 birds today as groundfeeders were driven to feeding stations by the accumulating snow. I was hoping for some winter finches, but they did not make an appearance. However, for the first time in the three years that we’ve lived here, we had a pair of Northern Cardinals at the feeders together. Last winter, and a few times off and on during this summer and fall, we’ve been treated to a male, while this winter a female has been frequenting the yard. During the snow yesterday, the male returned, and the two fed together on our hopper and platform feeders.

While cardinals are by no means rare in Southern Maine, they are not a bird of the deep woods. Nor are they a bird of open lawn. Over the past few years, we’ve been working hard to diversify and improve our yard’s habitat, especially by allowing 80% of what had been lawn to revert to fields and scrub. Two long edges now densely packed with brambles and a scrubby thicket is already forming, and this habitat improvement is likely the reason for cardinals to now be frequenting our yard – along with a noticeable increase in our sparrow sightings.

Here’s the list for the past two days for the backyard:
Mourning Dove: 10
Black-capped Chickadee: 4++
Dark-eyed Junco: 4
Downy Woodpecker: 2
Hairy Woodpecker: 2
Tufted Titmouse: 2+
Red-breasted Nuthatch: 2
White-breasted Nuthatch: 2
American Tree Sparrow: 2
Northern Cardinal: 2
American Crow: 1
American Goldfinch: 1+

It’s been a different story here at the store however. We were open for half the day yesterday, and of course we are open today. I had fully expected to be spending some quality time observing the feeding station, especially because it has been quite busy of late. However, it has been eerily quiet out there, with few visits by any of our “regulars.” (Our weekly feeder counts, by the way, are posted on the "News" section of www.yarmouthbirds.com, in case you are interested).

While we’re still working on improving the amount of cover here as well – our garden and feeding station is sandwiched between two parking lots, afterall – we usually have fairly regular activity. The fact that we’ve had so little activity despite the inclement weather likely means only one thing: a predator. We do have a Cooper’s Hawk that regularly buzzes through, and on Sunday evening, an immature Northern Shrike was hunting here. This was a young bird, as was the shrike that grabbed a Song Sparrow here back on November 18th. Is this the same bird? Hard to say, but we’ll see if it sticks around this time. Considering that the few birds that we’ve been seeing at the feeding station have been mostly Mourning Doves and Blue Jays, a stalking shrike - too small to take either of those species - would fit the bill as to what is keeping activity to a minimum here at the store’s feeding station.

How about your feeders?