Our Backyard Birds

A common backyard bird, the white-breasted nuthatch. Photograph by Craig Smith
By Ron McAdow, Executive Director
Birds reward attention all year long. As the seasons change, so does our bird population. Some birds nest here but go south for the winter. A few rose-breasted grosbeaks are still with us, but the last hummingbirds departed in mid-September. Other species, such as belted kingfishers and great blue herons, stay in eastern Massachusetts as long as they can find open water. Dark-eyed juncos breed farther north and spend the coldest months here.  Crossbills and pine siskins are examples of groups that usually winter to the north but “irrupt” down our way some years in response to weather, food availability, or other circumstances.

Some birds stay in their local territory throughout the year. Turkeys don’t migrate—they can fly but they don’t haul those bulky bodies on long trips. Most species of woodpeckers are permanent residents, as are backyard regulars such as cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, and titmice.

In my mind SVT has always been connected with birds. Founder Allen Morgan was a passionate birder and a companion to famous American ornithologists including Ludlow Griscom. Allen hired a pre-eminent Massachusetts natural history illustrator, Gordon Morrison, to design SVT’s marsh wren logo.

SVT supports the Concord Christmas Bird Count. We offer a slide lecture about our local winter birds that teaches identification of species commonly seen around feeding stations and profiles predators—hawks and owls—that are with us through the cold months.  

This year SVT is creating a new bird identification tool for our website. The idea is to reduce the barrier to beginning with birds by providing an easy way to learn those species often seen in backyards. Please let me know if you have suggestions for making it more useful.

Although all kinds of observations are reported to SVT’s Nature Sightings page, birds are perennial stars. Their charisma makes them fun to photograph and the fact that they are active during the day gives us a chance to see them. SVT helps protect wildlife habitat in our part of Massachusetts—and part of the payoff is our wonderful diversity of bird life.