Last updated on April 21, 2020

There’s time to look out your window now!

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Right outside my office window I have a bird feeder and I can see our bluebird house several yards away.  I’ve captured bluebirds with my camera a while back during spring.  I’ve seen them looking out of their own door/window the the bluebird house like this.

Putting up and maintaining a bird feeder can give you lots of glimpses of beautiful nature here in the Ozarks.

Putting up and maintaining a bird feeder can give you lots of glimpses of beautiful nature here in the Ozarks.

Bird watching can be a lot of fun for both adults and kids.

Great Bird Feeders

Our single level town home has a good size deck that we often use for “deck parties” with wine and grilled burgers.  Our deck is also surrounded by trees and bird feeders.  We can sit there with the awning drawn over,  in the shade and hear many bird calls and see birds fluttering to and from our feeders.

I capture many of my bird images from inside my house through windows.  We have removed some of our window screens for this purpose.

We have several different bird feeders, ones similar to each of those in the grid below:

Identify Your birds

My husband and I have several bird books with lots of images so we can identify the birds we see.  Here are some great books available on Amazon that are not expensive.

Birding by Ear

You can also learn to identify bird by their calls.  Its called “Birding by Ear”.   Here is a nice article about that:

https://www.audubon.org/news/how-start-identifying-birds-their-songs-and-calls

Here is a link to a site where you can learn the sounds of our north american birds: Bird Sounds

• Listen to the beautiful sound of an eastern bluebird like I get in my bluebird box each spring:
• Listen to the call of Gold Finches like is see pretty much year round.
• I see Carolina Wrens often out my office window. I guess If I would open my window I could hear this sound.
• Black-capped Chickadees and Carolina Chickadees are very frequent visitors to our yard.
• The sounds of Red-headed Woodpeckers  Red-bellied Woodpeckers and Downy Woodpeckers are heard a lot from our deck and both Mel and I love to watch them feed on suet in the mesh feeders.
• We see a lot of Tufted Tidmouse too.
• The sound of the Mourning Dove is Very calming to me.
• I enjoy the House Finches that visit us also.

My Bird Images from my yard

Here are some images I’ve captured of birds around our home and deck. ( hope I have each identified correctly, if not, please let me know by commenting).  I use my Canon digital SLR camera with its 70-200 lens for the feeders further away but I have used my iphone camera for some also and I crop and up-size them in Photoshop.

Eastern Bluebird	Goldfinch	Hummingbird	Chickadee	House Finch
Tufted Tidmouse	More Gold Finches	Mourning Dove	Red-bellied Woodpeckeer	Ruby throated hummingbird
House Finch

Cameras

If you do not have a digital camera with a long lens, this one might be a good starter one for you. (I’m a Canon fan myself)

What do you need to begin bird watching from home?

• Time (take time to watch for birds around your home
• Get a book or two about bird identification (such as the Audubon Society Books)
• Binoculars
• You might want a bird watching journal you can keep up with your sightings.
• Set up some feeders around your home to attract.  Bird baths will also help attract birds to your yard.

Some great binoculars

Bird Watching Journals

Mel and I have the last one shown in the grid below.

Bird Baths

Resources

Arkansas Autobon Society

Bella Vista Birds (facebook)

Audubon Societies Near Bella Vista (Web)

Comments

I enjoy receiving comments and questions from site visitors. Please leave yours below -shirley

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