I am so loving the dead oak in Mr. Neil's yard! This may look like a bunch of dead boring branches, but it is teeming with life. It was struck by lightening and had to be felled and when the tree was down, I asked if he would mind leaving it there to do its decomposition thing. He agreed and this fall it has been sparrow town! I've been scattering seeds for sparrows all along the edges to encourage them to pop out, mostly white millet, flax, canary seed, sunflower chips, cracked corn, canola, and Nyjer.

The juncos have just been lovin' it. They will even perch on some of the branches and chill out for a bit, allowing you to get cute photos of them doing their impersonation of a fluffy puffball.

Others juncos just give you the sass. It's a fun challenge getting photos of tiny birds not at a bird feeder.

This week, the migratory sparrows have shown up in earnest. Even around my neighborhood I've found some lurking white-crowned sparrows. So far in the fallen oak I have found white-throated sparrows like the one in the above photo. They seem a tad cagey compared to the juncos, preferring to stay within the tree branches. They must have just arrived, maybe after a few days of refueling they will stay out in the open more.

Speaking of cagey, there is at least one fox sparrow lurking in the oak. The above photo was the best that I could do for a photo. I swear, that is the back of a fox sparrow. Really, it is. It's different than the other brown birds featured in this post. Honest.

This bird popping out for the sparrow mix surprised me. I would have thought they would be outta the state by now. It looks a little different from we're used to. Can you guess it? If you said chipping sparrow, you'd be right. The tree sparrows should be here very soon after these guys go.

The song sparrow in this awkward position is hoping that if it sits still enough, I won't notice and will aim my scope else where and it can enjoy whatever morsel it just found in peace. It's not every day you see a bird with it's tail caught in a branch--how embarrassing. Someone call Mr. Blackwell.

Sparrows aren't the only birds enjoying the fallen oak. The titmice have been grabbing leaves and pecking the heck out of them, there must be some type of bug or larvae lurking in there.

And it's not just the fallen tree itself that has been fun. You may have noticed in previous that we've turned the stump into a tray feeder and everybody has been using it (well, maybe not the hummingbirds, hard to put nectar on a stump).

And it's not just the brown birds either. I put some mixed nuts on their for the chickadees, titmice and nuthatches, but it's never long before a blue jay wants in on some of that action. They love their nuts.

I love this photo. That chickadee looks like it's thinking, "Well, there goes the neighborhood." There's now attractive way to mammal proof a stump, but we have all the other feeder poles mammal proofed so I'm not too bothered if the squirrels and chipmunks want to hoover up the seeds. Since this stump doesn't have much in the way of drainage holes, it helps to have birds and critters move the seed faster.

Holy Crap! As I'm starting this entry, I'm sitting on our couch which faces the windows in our apartment. An adult Cooper's hawk has just landed on a wire outside the window and we are pretty much face to face. The hawk is having a tough time, she wants to focus on the pigeons eating near my feeder, but with the lights on in my apartment, she has also noticed the human facing her. I wonder if I can reach for my camera without her flying away? Nope. She just flew. Cool start to the morning though! Now, on to cedar waxwings:

Here is a cedar waxwing eating berries off of a showy mountain ash, or as Mr. Neil calls them, rowan trees. Now that there are great birds established on his land and thriving honey bees, we're trying to find ways to help both out by improving the quality of the surrounding woods.

The woods have some great plants, but some invasive buchthorn is moving in which in a few years will choke out all the great native plants like Jack-in-the-Pulpit and sumac. So, I know from reading books what plants birds like, but I don't have much in the way of practical knowledge--it's hard to put that into practice in a one bedroom apartment, but helping with the project will let me put some of that book learnin' to use. I found a nursery near Carpenter Nature Center that specializes in native plant landscaping called Out Back Nursery. The first time I went there just to look around, I noticed a guy named Pete staring at some pots of soil and some plant growth. After a few minutes, I went over and asked what he was up to and he replied, "My mix. There's something I'm doing wrong with my mix. These aren't growing the way they're supposed to, so I'm trying to figure out what I need to change in my soil mix."

That is my kind of guy--he feels about native plants the way I feel about birds. I found the right nursery. I also like how they group some of their displays by habitat. If you want to turn your yard into oak savanna, they have a whole grouping of the types of native plants that you would need for an oak savanna habitat. Nice! I highly recommend this place if you're looking for some native plant ideas.

So, I've gotten some trees from them to put in this fall, including this showy mountain ash that had a few berries left on it. The waxwings found it on Sunday. It was SO cool. Sunday, the light was perfect and the autumn leaves made for a lovely background for photos. I spent most of the day outside coughing and digiscoping. I watched a small flock of cedar waxwings fly over, kind of slow in mid flap, and circle over the feeding area--some bird in that flock noticed the bright berries. They circled a second time and landed high in an oak, carefully scanning the area for predators. After a few minutes, one by one, they descended on the showy mountain ash. The adult in the above photo is being watched by a younger waxwing.

The younger cedar waxwings are distinguished by the vertical striping down the front of their breast...and their lack of grace and elegance when scaling the branches for berries.

After watching an adult eat its fill of this cluster of berries, this younger waxwing struggled to reach the few remainders. You can't see it in the photos, but there was much flapping and slipping.

Eventually, the young waxwing figured it out and began to eat the last three berries.

The first two berries went down quickly, but there was some hesitation going for the last. Was the bird getting full? Had it eaten too much? But, never to leave an uneaten berry go uneaten, the young waxwing took the last berry.

Sure enough the bird's crop was bulging with berries after eating that last bite. See the pinkish blob along the neck? It may look like this bird has a huge tumor, but it's just a muscular pouch (now full of ash berries) used to store food awaiting digestion.