A plethora of colorful birds have returned to Eastern Idaho

The calls of several Bullock’s orioles were a welcome sound last week as I heard the males calling to the females. I put out some fresh orange halves and hid in my shed with my camera. It did not take long before a beautiful orange and black male showed up. It appeared hungry and began tearing the sweet, juicy meat out.

It wasn’t long before a female replaced the male, and it too appeared thankful for the sweet mid-morning offering. About a half hour later, a Western tanager took over from the orioles on the fruit, and even a black-headed grosbeak stopped in for a taste test.

This week, with the rain/snowy cool weather, some of the songbirds I thought had moved on showed up to add color to my backyard. An evening and a rose-breasted grosbeak joined the black-headed grosbeaks at my whole sunflower seed offerings. Then to add a little blue to the mix, a Stellar’s jay and some Lazuli buntings came in for the easy pickings.

Thursday evening, after being gone most of the day, I got out of the car and heard the drumming of a woodpecker on a log in the backyard. A red-napped sapsucker was drumming on a wooden swing, but it was gone when I got out with my camera. This male sapsucker was in full breeding colors of red, black and white – a handsome bird.

Friday morning greeted me with a lot of singing birds; in my front yard were about 20 yellow-rumped warblers. In my backyard, about 20 pine siskins were fighting over the nyjer seed sacks. The aggressive siskins had driven all the American goldfinches away from the seed sacks, so the finches had to share the sunflower seed feeders with the bigger birds.

I will enjoy all these birds for a few days before most of them will move on, but the orioles and goldfinches will remain here and nest in my rose bushes, chokecherry and evergreen trees. There have already been black-chinned, Rufous and Calliope hummingbirds visiting their feeders, and I hope several of them will set up home here again this year.

Looks like the summer weather will be coming in next week. I am looking forward to it as I will increase my hunting for rocks hard before the rattlesnakes get too bad. But I will follow the late spring bird migration and will try and find a few animals in the early morning and late evening.

I hope all of you had a great holiday weekend with family and friends.