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This President’s Day weekend, the annual Great Backyard Bird Count is taking place. People are identifying birds from around the world for fun, scientific research and a chance to win a pair of Zeiss binoculars. Cornell Labs and other sponsors run the event offering free phone apps that can help us to identify birds by pictures or sound calls. I first tried the Merlin Bird ID app and quickly selected birds I saw which then took me to the eBird website to provide more details. Shown in the photo from my backyard seed feeder is a male Northern Cardinal and a chipping sparrow (males and females look the same) based on the field guide book: Birds of the Carolinas by Stan Tekiela.

This is the third bird feeder we’ve tried to use in the past week - the first one provided a mix of sunflower seed to birds and squirrels, which reminded us of Mark Rober’s videos building squirrel mazes. Then we tried an oriole feeder using sliced oranges and jelly. We didn’t observe orioles yet as they apparently migrate in early April but we did get some small Eastern Bluebirds briefly check out the goodies. The seed feeder shown in the picture is called a “Squirrel-X1” made by Classic Brands LLC which is available at many big box retailers.