re: #98 wrenchwench

I had no idea what I was getting in to with birbs. I need to go to birb school.

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My brother and I helped with Christmas bird counts a few times in the late 1970s in/near the village we lived in in northern NY state. A big thing in that community was sighting cardinals during that count since I guess they tended not to overwinter that far north.* My brother and I were generally along some of the back roads getting counts of Snow Bunting flocks and edge woodland/meadow bird like chickadees, etc. A few people would go over to the outlets of the dams on the St Lawrence River where there was year-round open water and thus large numbers of geese congregated there.

* - Rough equivalent finch (seed eaters) we got in our feeders were Evening Grosbeaks. And a rare Rose-breasted Grosbeak. When I lived in western PA and had a feeder out the Grosbeaks were very rare as compared to having a lot of Cardinals. I once counted fourteen Cardinals queued up to get sunflower seeds. Splitting time with the chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, plus a blue jay jumping the line every so often. After a 8” snowfall once I saw a crow scraping snow off a block to get at seeds scattered there.