A raptor overflew the garden and suddenly there were dozens of small birds sheltering in the Viburnum bush near the house, hanging off the branches like Xmas ornaments. While waiting until it was safe to come out, this Junco found a berry to snack on.
There is a growing awareness (still a long way to go) that tidying the garden as we go into winter is a bad thing to do. Leaving our garden “scruffy” until spring means that birds like these American Goldfinches can find something to eat without needing to rely on our feeders.
These birds were eating seeds from a small-flowered form of sunflower.
This fellow has recently set up winter quarters on the northern side of our garden where there are trees and dense shrubs – he spends a lot of time energetically evicting the more relaxed greys.
This is turning into a very interesting birding start to winter – there was the Evening Grosbeak a few days ago in the garden, a recent visit by a Carolina Wren and then a couple of days ago a female Red-bellied Woodpecker put in an appearance. A rare bird this far north -, just a few in the arboretum really, and this is the first in the garden for quite a few years.
(Memory Sunday will be back next week – this was too good to miss sharing though)
Not certain of the particular Aster species but it’s one of the small wild ones. These seed heads are a fraction of the size of the Ligularia illustrated here yesterday.
A large and sprawling pond-side plant with deep red leaves, yellow flowers and now these large pom-pom seed heads to be left standing as bird food in the winter.
This rowan tree has been hanging on to its leaves for a long time this fall. Perfect light this morning.
I’d had been thinking about turning off the puimp to the garden waterfall today or tomorrow – thank goodness I was not in a rush.
Pearly Everlasting as winter begins and we wake up to garden frosts
