Beautiful Birds

I live in a beautiful marshy town. Long time residents have purchased hundreds of acres of land within the town limits to save as nature sanctuaries. Large, marshy areas without homes or developments have led to a HUGE bird population. With the return of spring, the birds are out all over the place. It's so noisy! There are so many fun calls and sounds. You can readily see on my street:

Red-Winged Blackbird

Blue-Jays

Northern Cardinals

Mourning Doves

Robins

Black-capped Chickadee










I've found this great website that helps you to identify birds. They have many tools to help you find the birds you may have seen outside using shape, color, location etc. My favorite piece of the website is that they include the sound that each bird makes. Go visit any page for a bird and they'll have a link to that bird's call. Our family favorite is the Chickadee, if I could figure out how to link to the sound I would, but you're just going to have to click on the Chickadee link above to hear it for yourself. :) My least favorite is the mourning dove -- it's my unofficial alarm clock every morning around 6:45 AM. The bird has some serious time keeping skills. I'll admit I shake my fist in the air at the pesky dove. Really, can't it wait 15 more minutes????

Maybe someday I'll be able to recognize and identify all my flying neighbors just by the way they say hello.