My new smart bird feeder camera has transformed my backyard. And me.

My wonderful fiancé, Robin (coincidentally enough), got me a HiBird for Christmas. (HiBirds are a feature-heavy competitor to Bird Buddy.) Her son, George, was good enough to install it and we got it operational on New Year’s Day.

We have a stunningly beautiful backyard. There were a few birds around (the BirdNET app helped us ID some chirpage), but in truth we just didn’t see as many as it seems like we used to. Research bears this out. In the US and Canada, total bird numbers have declined by ~30% since 1970.^*

Boy howdy, has the yard changed. It’s like O’Hare the day before Thanksgiving out there.

Since this is the first day of Spring, I thought I’d take a moment to catalog what we’ve seen since the new year.

Birds in the Backyard

Since flipping on the HiBird, we’ve been visited by 21 species.

Regulars (Norm and Cliff Tier)

These species have been our absolute best customers.

• House Finch
• Song Sparrow
• Eastern Bluebird
• White-Throated Sparrow

Pretty Regulars

• Northern Cardinal
• Tufted Titmouse
• Carolina Chickadee
• Carolina Wren

Commonly Spotted

• Downy Woodpecker
• White-Breasted Nuthatch
• Eastern Towhee
• Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Rare/Occasional Visitors

• Baltimore Oriole
• Northern Mockingbird
• Goldfinch
• Dark-Eyed Junko
• Brown-Headed Nuthatch
• European Starling
• American Robin
• Brown-Headed Cowbird
• Myrtle Warbler
• Brown Thrasher

Notes & Observations

• Food matters. I initially bought a bag of “bird food” from the grocery store. After a few days, I was wondering where the birds were. So I went to an actual bird shop here in town and discovered that the stuff I had bought was full of things that birds won’t eat. Might as well have filled the feeder up with gravel. So I got a bag of the good stuff. Word got around in a hurry. (There’s probably a Twitter joke here somewhere, but I’m too lazy to work for it.)
• With the “Norm & Cliff” tier, I don’t know if we have a million of them around here or if it’s just a couple with nothing better to do. The finches and sparrows found us right away, and the bluebirds were right behind them. We might as well pitch them a tent because these guys never go away.’
• All these species are twitchy little guys who dark away at the first sign of anything incoming.
• Except the bluebirds, who are a straight-up street gang. Biggest assholes in the yard, hands-down.
• Some species get along better with others. For example, the house finch and song sparrows are BFFs.
• I’m seeing males and females from most of the popular species—finches, sparrows, bluebirds—although with some species it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference. The males might be a little bigger and their songs are slightly different. This seems to be true for the song sparrow.
• There are cases where only one sex or the other shows up (in cases is where I can tell the difference). For the longest time we only saw the female cardinal. The male would put in an appearance once every few weeks, but the female was a daily patron. In the last week or so, that has flipped. We’re seeing the male every day, but the female not so much. We see a lot of the downy woodpecker male, but to have only seen the female once.
• Some birds are around a few days and then they’re gone. Like Oriole. He showed up out of nowhere, was a regular for about a week, and I haven’t seen him since. I don’t think they’re migratory, but what do I know?
• The squirrel shows up once a day and hogs the feeder for two or three minutes. I like squirrels, so I’m not bothered by this. If he gets out of hand, though, they apparently make seed with hot sauce. And birds can’t detect capsaicin.
• A couple of times the visits dropped dramatically. As in, we went from several hundred captures a day to a few dozen. I researched possible causes, and the most likely candidate was a hawk. We’ve seen one in the yard in the past, although I didn’t see one this time. Sneaky little fuckers.
• There are more species out there. Some are ground feeders and don’t hop up to the birdhouse. The robins, thrashers, warblers, and juncos were probably checking out of curiosity.
• I’ve never known much about birds, but this feeder has changed me. When I capture a new species, I’m absolutely giddy.
• I’m looking forward to some new birds for spring and summer. My references told me to be on the lookout for rose-breasted grosbeaks, indigo buntings, orchard orioles (which I’ve never heard of), and chipping sparrows. I can also expect to see more of infrequent visitors like the goldfinch.

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* Decline of the North American avifauna. Science, 366(6461), 120–124. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw1313