Current identified birds

For my first big photo dump, I want to post a photo for each bird I'm fairly certain I have currently identified in the yard. I will continue to post new birds I see, and pictures of these birds in the future, but here is a summary of all of the birds I have seen and identified in the last couple of weeks before starting this blog.

Here is a table of the birds with their latin names included.

Species	Scientific/Latin name
American Crow	Corvus brachyrhynchos
American Robin	Turdus migratorius
Blue Jay	Cyanocitta cristata
Brown-headed Cowbird	Molothrus ater
Chipping Sparrow	Spizella passerina
Eastern Towhee	Pipilo erythrophthalmus
House Finch	Haemorhous mexicanus
House Sparrow	Passer domesticus
Mourning Dove	Zenaida macroura
Northern Cardinal	Cardinalis cardinalis
Red-bellied Woodpecker	Melanerpes carolinus
Song Sparrow	Melospiza melodia
White-throated Sparrow	Zonotrichia albicollis

And here are the pictures:

American Crow

American Robin

Blue Jay

Brown-Headed Cowbird (male)

Brown-Headed Cowbird (female)

Male and female brown-headed cowbirds

Chipping Sparrow

Eastern Towhee

House Finch

House Sparrow

Mourning Dove

Northern Cardinal (female)

Northern Cardinal (male)

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Close-up on Red-bellied Woodpecker

Song Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow

The following pictures are identified species seen in the yard, but please do not get confused: they are not birds! Of course one of them is not aware of that when it comes to who should be using a bird feeder. I allow it.

Eastern Gray Squirrel

Eastern Cotton-tail

This is a female domestic house cat. Her name is Triscuit, and she loves exploring in the backyard, but is always supervised, so she does not disturb the other species found in this blog. She does, however, appreciate them.

Please let me know if you have any questions about these pictures or birds (not that I am an expert) or you think I have misidentified any.

Thanks!

What is Front Yard Birder?

April of 2020, as I settled in for the "quarentimes" or however we refer to this time with the spread of the Covid 19 virus and social distancing, I decided to hang several bird feeders I have had in my garage for a while. Two of the bird feeders were from my grandfather- he was not using them anymore.

This one has seen better days, but the birds and I have been managing with some duct tape repairs since one of the perches went missing. I blame a squirrel, but it may have been the wind...

The other one was a lovely wooden cardinal-looking bird feeder which my parents got me for my birthday a couple years ago (or it may have been for the winter holidays? With a December birthday, the presents can run together).

I had a bag of sunflower seeds I'd been saving for the  feeder (the kind marketed for birds- no picture of that), and picked up a bag of wild bird food from a hardware store.

I also had a lovely wooden birdhouse that I was given the same year as the cardinal bird feeder

I hung all of these up in my front yard- one bird feeder on a post on the front porch, and the others in the large tree in our front yard (I believe it is a maple tree). 

I put the sunflower seeds in the cardinal shaped feeder (because of its design it can really only hold large sized seeds and bird food) and the wild bird food in the other two.

Almost immediately I started seeing birds and squirrels at the feeders, and even occasionally saw birds investigating the bird house. I started trying to identify the birds, and took out the Nikon camera I got when I took a photography class 10 years ago. I am far from an expert photographer, and the camera is not the fanciest, but for the past few weeks I have been photographing the animals through my front window (and occasionally in the backyard when I am there, though there are currently no feeders there). 

My plan for this blog is to post the pictures of birds (and occasionally other species) I have identified, or birds I need help identifying, and try to catalog the species I see. I will also post pictures that I think are pretty, interesting, or otherwise worth sharing. 

Thanks!