Stella's Social Club

[mlm Mike]

nope just scrub jays and stellar jays. stellar jays are pretty though. Deep blue with a black crested head

Stellar Jays sound interesting, I'll have to look those up.

 

[gryeyes]

nope just scrub jays and stellar jays. stellar jays are pretty though. Deep blue with a black crested head

No cardinals, no bluebirds ("jays" aren't the same), but tons o' chickadees, titmouse, and golden finches. Oh, and woodpeckers.

It has always bummed me out there aren't cardinals on the west coast.

 

[Hangtown Farms]

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ahh but we do have bluebirds. My son's cubscout pack went Bluebird watching last spring. Up here we also have Mountain Bluebirds which are brighter.

 

[drumstick diva]

we get cardinals and they are gorgeous against a snowy background. I've seen 4 different kinds of woodpecker, goldfinches, ocasionally cedar waxwings, nuthatches, chickadees, blue jays (not too many since the nile virus really affects them). When we first moved in 43 years ago, we had pheasant which were something really impressive to former city people. We had bobwhites till the area got so built up. And we have falcons and hawks and owls plus fox and coyotes that seem right at home in a residential area. Of course Willow Springs has alot of forest preserves and wooded areas.

 

[ronott1]

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In the Valley we have what we call Scrub Jays. They are very nasty birds. I had one of the dive bombing me. They often go after my cats too.

They are gray in color and not pretty as Stellar Jays.

 

[ronott1]

Why don't we have cardinals? Why?

As with many things, Times they are a changin!

Range
The northern cardinal is found throughout the eastern United States and on south into Mexico and Central America. Historically, cardinals were most numerous in the southern portions of their geographic range, but they have been steadily increasing in numbers in the north and are even expanding their distribution northward into northern New England and southern Canada. The western boundary of their range is roughly along a line from the Dakotas to western Texas although there are cardinal populations in New Mexico, southern Arizona, and California. The expanding distribution of the northern cardinal has been described by some as another ecological consequence of global warming. Some researchers, though, feel that the increasing popular habit of providing birds with seed in feeders may have allowed this species to survive and thrive in regions previously too marginal or harsh for their existence. Further, the ongoing fragmentation of natural forest habitats by human activity and the proliferation of suburban shrub and conifer plantings have created increasingly abundant �edge� ecosystems which are greatly favored by this species.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

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We have Stellar Jays and scrub jays here too. The Stellar Jays are bold and love to grab bits of bread or anything you throw out there - they are very bossy like East Coast Blue Jays. They make lots of noise and what is so funny is that they look furtive as they swipe seeds (I say swipe because they truly have a gangsta guilty expression on their little faces) from the feeder. I always tell DH that they must get a lot of flack from people for them to be so worried they'll get run off as they eat seed from the birdfeeder.

I enjoy seeing them. Another one we have here is the Flicker. They also eat birdseed and scare all the sparrows away. I thought they only ate bugs (like a woodpecker) and was astonished to find one hanging belly-up clinging to the underside of the birdfeeder, eating seeds.

When I used to live on the East Coast I fed the cardinals in a pie pan. They are gorgeous.

 

[Mahonri]

I've seen a rare cardinal twice in my 26 years here... Really surprised me. I figured a monsoon storm blew them in.... but it's been at least 10 years since the last sighting. Is Phoenix considered southern AZ?

 

[mlm Mike]

I've seen a rare cardinal twice in my 26 years here... Really surprised me. I figured a monsoon storm blew them in.... but it's been at least 10 years since the last sighting. Is Phoenix considered southern AZ?

I thought Cardinals were so numerous in Arizona they named their football team after them.

 

[NotAFarm]

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.....and they seem "out of place" just like the cardinal birds.......you need snow to play REAL football!