Bird feeding and bird watching is big business in the United States. Three million households buy wild birdseed during the year. The annual market is $6.3 billion - that’s billion with a “B”. Bird watching, in fact, is second only to gardening as the nation’s most popular outdoor activity. I spend my share on my fine-feathered friends. They’re fun to watch and I enjoy having them … [Read more...]

  In last week’s CvilleBuzz, I commented that the “blonde finch” Jill Smith had seen at her feeder may have been an albino house finch. Another loyal CvilleBuzz reader, Marilyn Norford, then emailed her observation that it was not an albino, but a leucistic bird. Below she explains:   Leucistic and Albino Birds Albinism is another genetic condition that can turn a bird’s … [Read more...]

  I’ve got the blues again. Not the sad blues, the happy blues. Bluebirds. My resident pair raised two families last spring and summer. Only one baby survived the first nest. I’m not sure how many made it in the last nest because they split for parts unknown as soon as they fledged. I didn’t see hide nor hair (nor feather) of them for three months. Last week, they were back. Four … [Read more...]

He has been with us since we moved into our house in August 1973. He was most important tree in our yard, our main maple, guarding our home from a brutal afternoon sun for over four decades. But now he’s gone. Our faithful silver maple tree is now firewood. He was dying, almost completely dead, and an eyesore, and we had to chop him down. The builder of our home in Woodbrook, Claude Cotton, … [Read more...]

I’m not sure we had any Monarch butterflies this summer, though we have planted milkweed and have a towering butterfly bush. We have enjoyed seeing other butterflies, however, including lots of orange ones in recent weeks. I believe most of the orange butterflies visiting our yard are Viceroy butterflies. They are almost identical to Monarchs with similar orange-brown wings. A black line across … [Read more...]

One day they were here, then the next they were gone. All of them. Robins. Where on earth do they go? Though they are migratory songbirds, robins generally hang around in Central Virginia. Two winters ago, I had at least one robin that stayed in or near our yard throughout the winter. But I bet a dollar to a doughnut that in a few weeks, on a wet, cool morning, there will be a hundred robins … [Read more...]

For a year now, they have mowed down our hastas, decimated our vegetable gardens and gnawed on our azalea bushes. Deer, that is. And now it’s payback time, it’s urban archery season even within the city limits of places like Charlottesville, Lynchburg and other cities. From Sept. 1 through October 5, bow hunters with permits and landowner permission can shoot away at the city deer. To be eligible, … [Read more...]

I went out to the shed last evening – where I usually scatter some seeds– and the birds had all left, except for a small band of house sparrows. They were scratching away, happy to find a few seeds that the other birds ignored. I watched as they filled their little craws with millet and then flew away. I love my sparrows – the Blue Collar birds of my back yard. Sparrows are the Rodney … [Read more...]

My wife Nancy likes to screw around with the tree frogs in our backyard. I better explain. We have a small army of tree frogs among the aging branches of the white maple trees in our yard, and the miniscule amphibians love to sing. Beginning in early spring and into the summer, they puff up their throats and carry on as a mighty chorus. One starts singing, and then they all join in. It … [Read more...]

This was a strange year for bluebird watching. My resident pair picked out their house early and she was on the nest the first week of April. After the given two-week warming-the-eggs time and the two-week feeding-the-babies time, the young ones fledged. Young one, actually. Only one baby made it. Then, in less than two weeks she was on the nest again, and we waited and waited and nothing. She … [Read more...]