Video of two American Tree Sparrows feeding in our yard.

This video goes along with yesterday's post on our American Tree Sparrow flock. For Christmas, Rick gave me a Canon PowerShot Digital Elph (a tiny camera for photographing people at parties, not birds in the wild). But yesterday, while playing around with the video option, I caught two American Tree Sparrows feeding in our side yard just outside the kitchen window. I compressed the file way down, which lessened the quality, but it’s still a great picture also considering it's from such a tiny camera. I’ve never posted a video, so this will be an experiment. I’m going through Vimeo. It had just started to snow when I shot this video and you can see the little flakes.

American Tree Sparrows from Kelly Riccetti on Vimeo.

Craziness…coolness…total surprise!

When I checked in to Red tonight, I found Roy Hilbinger of Roy’s World had selected Red and the Peanut for the Dardos Award. Roy is a skilled and talented photographer, a thinker, a knowledgeable birder, and a gifted writer, so to be among his picks for the award makes it all the sweeter. Thank you, Roy!

Here is the skinny:

The Dardos Award is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.

The rules:
1) Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog. [Note: Don't forget to copy and paste the award jpeg itself to include on your own blog!]
2) Pass the award to another five blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.

In the short time I have been blogging, I have come across so many fun, informative and exciting blogs. I seem to learn something new everyday, and I’ve already made a lot of birding friends. Choosing only five bloggers to receive the award was stressing me out, so I decided to make it easy and go with the early Red Lovers:

The first person to welcome me to the world of blogging was Heather from Heather of the Hills. She dropped in introducing herself as a fellow Ohioan birder and nature lover. Heather has a playful sense of humor, posts wonderful pics of her beautiful woodlands, and is devoted to her blogging. Thanks for bringing me into the flock, Heather. I found a lot of other birding sites through Heather’s blog.

The second blog I stumbled on was the Nutty Birder by Eric and Rob Ripma. They are both fantastic photographers, and they also post on the Tri-State (Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio). They always have helpful info on their blog, as well as wonderful travelogues from weekend trips. They know birding inside and out!

The third blog I started following was Chris Photo Nature, which is based in Iceland. I visited Iceland in 1985 and immediately fell in love with the rocky cliffs and beautiful scenery, so when I found a birding blog with wonderful photos from Iceland, I was hooked. The European species are new and different for me.

The fourth blogger to become a Red Lover was Dave from Birds from behind. Dave is funny, and so is his blog. “Birds from behind” is dead-on descriptive because he tends to shoot his birds from the backside…if you catch my drift. Check it out for a chuckle and wonderful bird photography. Be sure to visit his warbler series.

The fifth blogger is Paul from Little Brown Job. Paul found Red and the Peanut early on. He and his wife, Debbie, are from Yorkshire in the U.K. They team up together in another blog called Snowbabies. I really enjoy looking at the European birds, especially their little Robin.

Since Roy only sent the award out to four bloggers, I’m going to scarf up his unused fifth spot and choose Kallen from Kitchen Window Birder as the sixth blogger. If you are at all a kitchen window birder, you will enjoy Kallen’s blog. She’s very enthusiastic and always has a fun story. Kallen brings a lot of energy to her blog. She also takes you along on field trips looking for birds in her area.

Our flock of American Tree Sparrows is growing...

Over the past two weeks, our small flock of American Tree Sparrows has gone from 3 to 12+. Late yesterday afternoon, I cracked my kitchen window so I could listen to their twittering. They sounded louder than usual and more animated, so I looked out to see what was going on. Three happy tree sparrows is a fine sight, but 12+ is comical with all of the dipping, chipping and hopping around. I was happy to see so many new additions to the flock…and it was really exciting to see them all in one place. The continued snow is driving them to our feeders.

Sitting outside my kitchen window, this fellow 

looks soft and sweet. I photographed him 

through the screen and glass, so he is hazy.

When I took this shot, I was lying in the 

snow under a bush hoping I was invisible. 

As you can see, I wasn’t. He’s looking right 

into my lens, no doubt laughing. I’m surprised 

he’s not sticking out his little tongue. 

Larry caught this tree sparrow in flight…totally cool.

…as an aside. Today, as I was trying to photograph the birds, a flock of about 300 Canada Geese flew over. For our neighborhood, that is pretty unusual and totally cool!!

A White-crowned Sparrow Couple

The male White-crowned Sparrow is such a striking bird. I love the combination of his black and white crown and orange bill. In Larry's photo, he has caught a male and a juvenile together. The juvenile isn't quite as flashy, but in this photo the raised rusty cap and profile are irresistible.  


Cool Facts about White-crowned Sparrows taken from Cornell’s All About Birds:

A young male White-crowned Sparrow learns the basics of the song it will sing as an adult during the first two or three months of its life. It does not learn directly from its father, but rather from the generalized song environment of its natal neighborhood.


Because male White-crowned Sparrows learn the songs they grew up with and do not travel far from where they were raised, song dialects frequently form. Males on the edge of two dialects may be bilingual and able to sing both dialects.

I like the way Larry framed the bird's head 

between the vines in this photo.

This Tufted Titmouse photo is too cute to sit on…

Larry, the bird photo wizard of southwest Ohio, just sent me this photo. I know I should wait to do a proper post on titmice this evening, but this guy is just too darn cute to languish in a folder on my computer all day. WordChick (a.k.a. Titmouse Lover), this one goes out to you for your birthday!

Feelin’ groovy…because I saw five White-winged Crossbills and a Sharpy today!

After reading White-winged Crossbills were sighted once again in Spring Grove Cemetery on the Birding in Cincinnati site and on the Nutty Birder site, I high-tailed it down there today. I drove around with my windows open for about an hour, listening and looking, but had no luck with the crossbills. I did, however, see a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. I heard his call first, then stopped the car and looked, and there he was. His yellow belly was such a pretty pale yellow it made smile (or maybe it was just saying his name...there's no doubt about it, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is fun to say).

I soon came to a section with several parked cars and people with binocs. This was a good sign. I parked and walked over. Three crossbills had just left about 20 minutes earlier. In their place, a Sharp-shinned Hawk (life bird for me). I was amazed at how small he was. He remained in the tree for a long time, occasionally flying out and circling. Earlier I had photographed what I assumed was a Cooper’s Hawk on a statue of a soldier, but it may have been the Sharp-shinned Hawk. It seemed too small for a Cooper’s when I photographed it.  


We waited about 45 minutes. The sharpy kept coming back to the hemlock. Apparently he was looking for the crossbills too. Eventually I heard their twittering, and we looked up and watched five of them fly into a pine. I fired off a shot, but it’s not great. You can sort of see the crossed bill and the rosy color. They chose the tallest tree to feed in, and my lens was not powerful enough for a decent shot. That’s okay. My binocs were just fine and I was able to add another lifer to my list. Crossbills are very quiet when feeding (just like us, I guess), but as soon as they took off in flight, their twittering was loud and clear.

A portrait of a female cardinal...

…courtesy of Larry…beautiful:

...first post of February, and the beginning of my second blog month! Thanks, Larry!