I’ve always enjoyed watching birds. When I was ten or eleven, I was a Lutheran Girl Pioneer–similar to a Girl Scout–and we built birdfeeders. My father mounted the feeder near the edge of the forest in our backyard and bought food. How I loved getting out the binoculars to see what birds were stopping by! I even bought a pocket book about the birds of North America, and I wore that book out.
Fast forward to about five years ago…
My husband bought me a bird feeder for Christmas. I was so excited! It took about three weeks for the birds to arrive. I watched for them every day, and when they finally did? Oh boy! I couldn’t get enough.
My backyard has robins, house finches, goldfinches, purple finches, several types of sparrows, cardinals, mourning doves, blue jays, grackles and juncos. Now and then Cedar waxwings will stop by. Beautiful birds.
Below is a cardinal sitting on a fence in our backyard. Grackles are on the ground at at both feeders, and a mourning dove sits at the pole base.
Where I live in Northwest Ohio, I’m able to experience some of the best spring bird migration in the United States. The Biggest Week in American Birding attracts thousands of bird enthusiasts to our area. Lake Erie, especially, has fantastic parks and marshes for bird viewing. Not far from where I live, there’s a park where I see a variety of warblers every spring.
We have amazing diversity with waterfowl here, too. Bald eagles, snowy egrets, great blue herons, Canadian geese, mallards, mersangers, different swans, and occasionally buffleheads can be seen near rivers, marshes and nearby Lake Erie.
All of this “birding” got me wondering about the backyard birds in other parts of the country. I was happy to learn that the characters in my Wyoming books would see the same birds as I do. “Common Birds in Wyoming” features birds I see either in my backyard or on walks nearby.
I’d love to hear the types of birds you see in your area. Please let me know in the comments!
Enjoy your day!
Jill Kemerer is a Publishers Weekly bestselling author of heartwarming, emotional, small-town romance novels often featuring cowboys. Her essentials include coffee, caramels, a stack of books and long walks outdoors in Ohio where she resides with her husband.
I love watching the finches that come up to my window feeder
You have a window feeder! You can see them up close! How cool!
we have rose breasted nuthatches here in Indiana – they are tiny like a chickadee in size!
Aww, they sound cute! I’m going to look them up. I wonder if we have them, too!
Our visitors are pretty similar to yours…plus we have a couple of chipmunks that freast on the spillover below.
Chipmunks are fun to watch! I enjoy them!
I hear them but don’t see them. I see plenty of squirrel and rabbits running around.
We have a LOT of bunnies in our yard. One squirrel. They’re fun!
I live in central Minnesota and we have the same types of birds at our feeders as you do. In the summer, I especially enjoy the hummingbirds as they are so fun to watch.
We get hummingbirds in the summer, too! I like putting a special feeder out for them!
I love watching & listening to the birds in our backyard! A few I don’t know their names, but I’ve seen black-capped chickadees, house wrens, house finches, cardinals, & my very favorite, bluebirds. We also sometimes see hawks, woodpeckers, & bluejays. On a few special occasions, we’ve seen bald eagles fly over the house & trees.
I love bluebirds, too! We’re trying to entice them to our yard, but we haven’t been able to get them there on a consistent basis. Bummer! Bald eagles are such an incredible sight!
Such a fun post, Jill! Here in Eastern Oregon, we have sparrows nesting in our snowball bush and robins bobbing around looking for worms. In June, the hummingbirds will arrive. We are also seeing geese migrating. We hear the occasional owl hooting, and often see hawks, magpies, dove, and quail, as well as wild turkeys in our area.
Ooh, I love hearing about your birds! We’re in a subdivision, so sadly, no owls! I would enjoy your area very much!
There’s a bald eagle sanctuary near me, so we see those in our area. Blackbirds, Bluejays, cardinals, robins, orioles, Ravens, crows, hawks, owls, mourning doves, Canada geese, all sorts of ducks, seagulls, cranes, pigeons, and more.
The doves kept making nests in my wreath on my door, so I had to trash it.
I’m grateful for bird sanctuaries. Bless the people who run them! That’s funny about the wreath. Ugh!
It’s more of a protected habitat than a sanctuary nonprofit, but it’s considered the largest one on the East Coast.
As I live 10 miles north of Ohio , probably the same as you. I saw robins a few days ago.
We’re practically neighbors! I lived in Tecumseh for a while–loved that town!
I live a few miles east of Hillsdale, but go to church in Adrian. You’re right Tecumseh is a very picturesque little town.
Hello, Jill. You are new to me so I’m glad to learn something about you. I live in the Salt Lake Valley in Utah. We have several feeders. Mostly we get sparrows and different varieties of finches, chickadees, blue jays, robins, juncos, doves and magpies, woodpeckers, flickers . We used to get a lot of quail but right now we only have one lone male. We think someone in the neighborhood must have poisoned them. We get hawks frequently. During migration we get others, towhees, tanagers, orioles, grosbeaks, nuthatches, wrens, lazulis and more. In summer we get hummingbirds. We’ve had mallard ducks too but not for a while. And just in the last year we’ve been getting tree squirrels which I love.
Utah is on my places I want to see. I’ve heard it’s so beautiful! That’s really sad about the poor quail. They’re fun little birds. I love tanagers and orioles–we’ll see them by the river all summer!
I live in Arkansas and we have robins , mockingbirds, cardinals, blue jays , bluebirds, doves, wrens, sparrows ,and some I don’t know the name of that come to my feeder. We also have bald eagles and hawks and wild turkeys.
Ooh, you have a lot of birds similar to ours! I like watching wild turkeys, although I don’t see many around my subdivision!
We get cardinals, woodpeckers, blue birds, doves, ibis, and rarely sandhill cranes! I know I get more, but these are the ones I know the names of! lol!!
I had never seen a sandhill crane until last year. We were driving to Michigan and saw a flock of them in a field!
I live in south central KY so I see about the same birds that you see.
Beautiful area! My husband and I visited Frankfort and Bardstown last year–loved them both!
I live in Arizona so I see a lot of Roadrunners
Okay, so that’s one bird we don’t have here! How fun!
We have a lot of cardinals, robin’s, blue jay’s and finches in our area.
We do, too! I love them!
I see sparrows, hawks and blackbirds plus I have hummingbirds that live in my back yard. Last week a teeny tiny one was able to leave the nest. Well heck, I guess they’re all teeny tiny. 🙂
Hummingbird babies! I can’t imagine how tiny they must be!
Cardinals, different types of black birds, 3 types of doves, hummingbirds, occasionally a roadrunner, once in a blue moon some love birds visit, and a bunch of little birds that I do not know the names of…. oh and at night these large white owls…
I would love to see those big white owls at night! You have a great variety of birds!
Jill, what a beautiful header!
My husband and I didn’t pay too much attention to birds until we retired. Ha! It probably has to do with being home more.
But one bird story that will always be in my heart was shortly after we lost my parents (4 months apart), on Easter morning, the day was gray, cold, and miserable. But I happened to look out at our bird feeders, and there were two cardinals, a male and female. No others. It was our first Easter without Mom and Dad, and I was a little emotional, and seeing those cardinals felt like a message from them to me. I’ll never forget.
Cardinals are beautiful symbols to us. I’m thankful God sent them to you that Easter. What a wonderful reminder that not only He is risen, but we will be too!
I live in Southern California, in a city surrounded by cities. If you look up Knott’s Berry Farm, I’m within a mile of it.
We have the usual crows, house finches, mourning doves, and pigeons, with the occasional scrub jay and phoebe. I know there’s a woodpecker nearby, but I’ve never seen it.
For a short time we had a red-tailed hark living near enough to us that it hunted all of the feral rabbits in the area.
Hello from Texas, I see Mockingbirds, Grackles, Mourning Doves, sparrows and red breasted sparrows that sing beautifully, we also see a couple of red cardinals and a couple of grey cardinals . We also have scissor tails and a couple of other different birds. I love seeing and hearing them all.
Hummingbirds, Cardinals, house wrens, goldfinches, downy woodpeckers, pileated woodpecker, turkeys, grackles, killdeer, Gambles Quail, redwing blackbirds, turkey vultures, starlings, kites, red tailed hawks, barn owls, falcons, bald eagles, Canada geese, mallard ducks, mocking birds, doves, great blue herons, and many more.
As so many have stated, I see many of the same birds you do, Jill. I don’t see cardinals and blue jays (we get Stellar’s jays in our mountains, above the Mojave Desert of CA). We’ve had the occasional roadrunner in our yard (they’re omnivores and eat smaller animals as well as dining in dumpsters…). Costas hummingbirds live here almost year round; they eat insects as well as nectar from flowers or feeders. California quail are nearby but won’t be coming to our yard since our landlord decided to neaten up the front and cleared out the “stationary” tumble weeds where they used to lurk out of sight. I’m not sure if they’re red tailed or what type but there are hawks once in a while.
Strangely, the only corvid family birds we see are ravens; crows aren’t native to these parts. Mockingbirds are seasonal residents. We think we’ve had the same family since we moved to this house in 1996; they come back every year. And mourning doves are abundant (we have to stuff material like foam insulation or rags in our eaves to prevent them nesting there). We observed years ago that they’re not wise nest builders (building so low that the cat could easily access the nest just by jumping; building such a poorly constructed nest that eggs could roll out; or the nest started falling apart while in use…). Vultures are out here but I only see them up in the sky when they’re circling something (no doubt dead or dying) below them on the ground.
Traveling south (doctors appointments) we’ve seen herons and egrets. One particularly rainy year we saw a kildeer enjoying a transient puddle. Northern flickers were spotted in our backyard once. Seagulls get blown off course and are seen. All sorts of birds pass through our locale.
P.S. My daughter helped find an illustration so we could ID some birds who touched down briefly in our yard: American Bitterns.
Hi Jill. I also live in NW Ohio. We see the same birds that you do. We have some robins that love to torment one of our cats. They will sit on the privacy fence and wait for him to come look out the window so they can tease him. Thank you so much for sharing. God bless you.