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Warblers Cover

Minnesota’s Warblers

  Up to 20 different species of warblers pass through the Twin Cities area between mid-April and the end of May, with the bulk passing through between the 5th and 15th of May. If you’d like to catch a sighting or two of these colorful migrants—in your backyard or around town—Minnesota birding expert Bob Janssen has helped us to prepare…

Spring Arrival Dates

Spring Migrant Arrival Dates

  Prepare Your Yard for Spring Migrants To be sure, one of the joys of feeding birds is hosting migratory birds for a brief time each spring as they make their way to summer breeding grounds. With some preparation—and a little luck!—you may be able to entice one ofthese migrants to stay and raise their broods in your own backyard.…

It’s Time Again for Winter-Visiting Finches

Welcome Pine Siskins and Common Redpolls This is the time of year when you may begin to see some less-common visitors to your backyard feeding stations. Every few years, we experience an “irruption”—an influx of typically northern-dwelling birds—into our Twin Cities Metro Area and beyond in Minnesota. The irruption is often due to poor crops of conifer seeds (pine and…

Winter Water

Want to attract more birds to your yard this winter? Supply a source of open water! When temperatures drop, birds are in a constant struggle to maintain their body temperatures. A steady source of fats and proteins will help to nourish and fuel birds’ metabolic needs and keep them warm. But also important—a source of water that is accessible (i.e.…

American Goldfinch in autumn

Transition Season

REPRINTED FROM OUR BIRD’S-EYE VIEW ARCHIVES: SEPT/OCT 2017 Minnetonka Manager Carol Chenault shares how she readies her backyard for the change in seasons Addressing Nectar Feeders As I bid the Baltimore Orioles farewell the first week of September, the transition to fall backyard bird feeding begins. Taking down the oriole feeders, washing them well with soap and water and disinfecting…

checking nest box

Fall Task: Clean Out Birdhouses

Why it’s important to clean birdhouses Cleaning out the birdhouses in your yard is one way to protect your backyard birds from pests and disease while making your birdhouses more attractive for new nesting birds. The fall clean up is very important. Dirty birdhouses can harbor rodents, insects, feather mites and bacteria that can spread disease to nesting birds and…

Late-Summer Reading List

The crazy, hazy, lazy days of late summer call for a great reading list! Bird lovers will enjoy these selections by local resident, naturalist wildlife photographer and prolific author; Stan Tekiela. A Year in Nature with Stan Tekiela—a Naturalist’s Notes on the Seasons Learn from the expert in this collection of some of the 500 newspaper columns from Stan’s 20…

Late-nesting Birds

Spring is just the beginning of the nesting season for our backyard birds. Some birds will produce numerous broods over the entire summer season and some birds will wait until mid-summer to start nesting. Multiple Broods Extend the Nesting Season For instance, American Robins can produce 3 or 4 broods from May through August. Each brood can take up to…

In Depth: Baltimore Orioles

This article is from our Bird’s-Eye View Newsletter Archives: May/June 2011 By White Bear Lake Manager Bob Ellis One of the most striking songbirds to visit backyards is the oriole. The vivid orange and black coloring of a male Baltimore oriole is unmistakable and dramatic. While both sexes display a white wing bar, the female’s palette is more subdued, with…