Bird of the season for this year (1 Viewer)

My bird for the season, so far at least, is the Northern Junco (formally the Slate Coloured Junco and for all I know called that again). They arrive in a flock of 30 or so and stay for most of the day, assuming it's always the same flock, but they're not all that common. Other birds drift in an out, but most of them are larger than the juncos and none of them stay very long. The thing about the juncos is that they really prefer to eat on the ground but if I scatter seed there, the squirrels move in as soon as they notice and take over until it's gone. Today I saw the fattest grey squirrel of my rather extensive experience squatting there and feeding like a gourmand- I swear it must have trouble getting up a tree, but of course it's early in the season.

I suppose I should give a weather report for my locale- it's been -20 at night for some days and not much warmer in the days, with an unusually heavy snow falling through most of them. Heavy for the temperature I mean, mostly air that cold doesn't produce much snow because it can't hold moisture and there is no 'lake effect' to speak of here. Have up to 2 feet on the ground, very White Christmas like.

Pyrrhuloxia.....they show up around the end of November, 1st of December, I love watching them flock up. It starts with one, in a couple of weeks I have a small flock, 6 up to 8, no more than that.

They visit the baths a couple times a day. In the morning they're vocal, in the afternoon they show up unannounced.

They forge my yard: a fairly close crop of weeds, a common West Texas Lawn, which varies yearly in species. I'm not sure if they flock up with other birds but during foraging they seem to always be accompanied by House Finches. They get along nicely. Occasionally, I'll find a Cardinal in the group.

Never see them during the summer. They leave early spring, end of February, 1st of March.

Anyway, Pyrrhuloxia is my seasonal winter visitor, a nice genital bird.

SanAngelo said:

Pyrrhuloxia.....they show up around the end of November, 1st of December, I love watching them flock up. It starts with one, in a couple of weeks I have a small flock, 6 up to 8, no more than that.

They visit the baths a couple times a day. In the morning they're vocal, in the afternoon they show up unannounced.

They forge my yard: a fairly close crop of weeds, a common West Texas Lawn, which varies yearly in species. I'm not sure if they flock up with other birds but during foraging they seem to always be accompanied by House Finches. They get along nicely. Occasionally, I'll find a Cardinal in the group.

Never see them during the summer. They leave early spring, end of February, 1st of March.

Anyway, Pyrrhuloxia is my seasonal winter visitor, a nice genital bird.

Click to expand...

So between the 2 of us we seem to have boxed in the more inhabitable zones of North American, from cold to hot as it were. And unless I have some truly polar birds show up later in the winter, I already have my northernmost visitors now.