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Property - Flora & Fauna - Birds (Home)
Carla and I have been feeding birds and small critters ever since we were kids. So, it comes as no surprise that we're doing the same thing here on Starview Ranch. In addition to feeding the birds seeds and suet, we also provide several different bird feeders, a couple of bird baths, 5 or 6 different kinds of bird houses, and even quite a few dead tree branches, since we don't have any decent sized trees with branches yet. All of these fun bird things are spread out in our front and back yards, along with some branches at the West end of the house. The main Bird Play Area is in the front yard, in a tear-drop shape which will eventually be the center of our front driveway, in the distant future. We are slowly developing a second play area in the back yard, and the West end of the house is only branches and ground feeding. Most of the birds we've seen so far seem to prefer eating on the ground, with only a couple using the feeders. And this is just fine with us, because the seed we spread on the ground that they don't eat, eventually grows and becomes green plants in place of brown dirt (smile). That is, if the Ground Squirrels don't get to it first! The birds we see here vary depending on the time of year. Some are quite colorful to look at, several sing beautiful songs, and a couple are absolutely amazing to watch as they soar, hover, and play with the winds. While others are just plain piglets, eating all they possibly can as soon as we put new birdseed out (laughing). The shortest visits we've had so far have been from the American Robin, the Mountain Bluebird and the Western Meadowlark. The longest visitors have been the Lark Bunting, the Horned Lark, the Brown-headed Cowbird, along with some plain old small Blackbirds. One of our permanent residents seems to be the Prairie Falcon. And, we also have several Mourning Doves which showed up in early May. Our most recent arrival (late May) is the Red-winged Blackbird, one of which has created a nest in one of our bird houses. Starting in late May, we've also seen a few Brewer's Blackbirds and Swainson's Thrushes, but have not gotten any photos of them yet. We also have photos of birds we can't identify, which might be youngsters of one of the species we can identify. But, since we're not sure, we put those photos in their own category. Yes indeed, we have quite a wide variety of birds here at Starview Ranch. And we only began taking notice of them this spring (2000), so we probably missed some of the winter birds. Also, many female birds of the various species we've seen here look a lot alike, to our untrained eyes. So the photos of females on our bird web pages may not be in the correct species category. Sorry about that. As we learn more, we should get better at identifying them. Each of our Bird photo pages contains descriptive text and drawings of the birds on that page. For those who are interested, the text pages are from the book "Birds of Denver and the Front Range", by Chris C. Fisher and Greg Butcher, published by Lone Pine Publishing, 1997, ISBN 1-55105-106-0. Additional drawings are from the book "Western Birds", a Peterson Field Guide, 3rd Edition, by Roger Tory Peterson, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990, ISBN 0-395-91173-7 (paperback). To view bird descriptions and photos, click any of the links in the text above and below, or click on any of the photos below. The photos we take are with a digital camera that does not have a telephoto lens. So, most of the photos are small, some are a bit blurry due to zooming in, while others were lucky shots when a bird was close by. Enjoy! |
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Text links to our Bird photo web pages:
Birds Home American Robin Bird Play Areas Brewer's Blackbird Brown-headed Cowbird Horned Lark Lark Bunting Mountain Bluebird Mourning Dove Prairie Falcon Red-winged Blackbird Swainson's Thrush Unidentified Birds Western Meadowlark |
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