Waiting For the Birds of Spring

In Kalamazoo we have robins year around although we don’t see them often.  I have seen them near the suet feeder but usually they sustain themselves on the crab apples or berries left during the winter.  Recently I saw a flock of them on the tree in driveway circle that has small fruits on it.  It was a dark day, overcast and snowy (of course), and the photos didn’t turn out.

I put out some dried cherries and craisins but realized the bushes on the side of the house still had berries and the crab trees still had crab apples, plus the snow quickly covered the dried fruit so no one could get at it.  So we left the robins forage on their own.

The birds we eagerly await are red winged blackbirds, orioles and hummingbirds.  We get lots of birds come through on migration during April ad May who don’t stay.  Blackbirds, orioles and hummers stick around for several months.    We look for blue birds too; a few stick around during winter but we don’t see them.  A few years ago we had this pair in our heated birdbath.

We had nesting bluebirds last summer in the box that our friend Loren gave us.  He got it from someone who makes them locally; it looks a lot like this one on Amazon.

Wooden Bluebird House with Reinforced Entrance Hole

The key with bluebird houses is to make the entrance hole small enough to let the bluebirds in but not the starlings. This one has a reinforced entrance to keep birds from pecking to enlarge the hole.

We’ll probably see the first red winged blackbirds early April, then the rest fly in!