Randy and Sheila keep a pie plate filled with water out on the table next to the BBQ all year round. There have been a lot of birds there this year, for some reason(maybe they were here all along but just found out about the pie plate).
There is a mated pair of ravens all year round (they clean their food and toys in the plate-this can be a bit gross), along with bluejays, towhees, chickadees, titmice, finches,woodpeckers, flickers, gnatcatchers,phoebes, sparrows, robins and probably others that we don't know about. There has been some talk of a wireless, infrared bird-cam. Randy would like to see the owls drinking at night, or see a
Clark's nutcracker again (so far only one pair sighted in 20 years).
None of the species will drink together, except for titmice, chickadees and sparrows, and even they they look at each other with great suspicion.
Then there are the
hummingbirds that come back every year, several dozen of them once the fledglings are out in mid-July. Randy and Sheila go through about 40 pounds of cane sugar each time(hummers don't seem to like beet sugar as well). Sugar water is for quick energy; they also eat bugs and collect nectar from flowers. The feeders never seem to delay their migration, which Randy hopes will be pretty soon because he is tired of feeding them.
Every once in a while the local red-tailed hawk swoops in and tries to catch a hummer. I'm not sure if it's been successful, but one time it crashed into a window and was unconscious for a few seconds. Surprise!
An amusing bird we've never seen before this year is the white-breasted nuthatch. They crawl down trees headfirst, then stop and turn their heads at a right angle. They have a low, monotonic whistle. It doesn't say this in Audubon's, but they seem to enjoy their baths a lot more than other birds and in general seem more extroverted than the rest of the tree-clingers around here.
Here's a nuthatch:
