We moved to Round Lake Beach a couple of weeks ago. We are in a newer neighborhood, where most homes have expansive green lawns of grass and few trees, most of which are ornamental. We’re on the outskirts of the neighborhood and our back yard faces a warehouse. Between the yard and the warehouse there’s some vegetation and a few trees. Our neighbors also have a few small trees in their yard but ours is bare. It’s a rental so I doubt we’ll put any big trees in while we’re here.
Shortly after we moved in, I placed two feeders in the yard, hanging from a gazebo frame, close to the house. Last Tuesday we moved these to the back of the yard, closer to the vegetation behind the fence.
This is a view of the house from the back yard. You can see the frame close to the house, standing on a small concrete patio.
Here’s some more views of the yard, before and after our latest snowfall. The back slopes up to a mound and you can see the vegetation and trees in the neighbors’ yards and behind our fence.
Up until today, we had seen 1 European Starling by the warehouse and a few songbird fly-bys. No one showed any interest in the feeders.
Until today! This morning we had (relatively speaking) a lot of bird action in the back yard. First, this morning I noticed a male Northern Cardinal perched in the tree behind the neighbor’s yard. He appeared to be looking at our feeders. He then flew into the tree behind our yard and then I was sure he was casing out our feeders. They are for smaller birds though so not suitable for a Northern Cardinal. After a minute he flew low over the back of our yard and landed in a tree in the other neighbor’s yard, not to be seen again today.
A little while later, Arthur looked out and he thought he saw a Dark-eyed Junco (slate-colored) flying away from our feeder.
Well, that was more bird action than we’ve had since we moved in, so we were already pretty excited. I mean, an almost-Junco and a kind-of flyover Cardinal, wow!
I was planning on putting out some feed on a ground platform between the feeders but when I was getting ready to do so I looked outside and saw a bird sitting on the top of the tube feeder! Our first official yard bird: an American Goldfinch!
He took bites from every perch on the feeder and remained munching for about 15 minutes before flying off. He (or one of his friends) came back a while later for about 5 minutes of feeding. Between these visits I placed the makeshift platform on the ground with a songbird mix. No one else came by today but we are starting to feel optimistic about getting some birds in the back yard!
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