IDENTIFYING SIMILAR “LITTLE BROWN BIRDS” AT YOUR FEEDERS THIS WINTER From our Bird’s-Eye View Newsletter archives: Volume 19, Issue 1 By Guest Contributor MELISSA BLOCK Part of the joy in backyard birding is identifying and keeping track of the birds that come to your yard over the years. Equipped with a field guide, it’s relatively easy to identify birds…
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 spruce) and catkins (birch and alders) that…