More pine siskins

There are no new birds at the feeder. The most common visitors are pine siskins followed by chickadees and then a few house sparrows. I have no seen any grosbeaks as yet this winter. Last winter there were evening grosbeaks as well as rose-breasted grosbeaks.

Another white-breasted nuthatch

Another white breasted nuthatch appeared today although the photo is borrowed from the internet. I could not take that good a photo! There are even more red-breasted nuthatches and plenty of chickadees. As well there are plenty of house sparrows and there are pine siskins visiting as well.

Yes! There is definitely snow!

As can be seen in the fuzzy photo we have had snow. We are to receive between 5 and 10 cm today but this is the result from overnight. My camera was not functioning properly but you can still see there are definitely two chickadees on the feeder. They do not mind the winter and are faithful visitors for most of the year. The other bird may be a house sparrow but it could be a female purple finch. There are lots of purple finches around just now.

Male and Female Hummingbirds

The top photo is of a female that seems to be bloated with eggs. I am a bit surprised as I thought that the young would already be hatched. There are plenty of young sparrows about and even some Brewer blackbird kids. The male is a bit fuzzy but may he is the dad!

Maya and House Sparrow

I managed to get a good photo of the maya from the Philippines. Above the photo are two photos of the common house sparrow. The two birds differ conspicuously in that the house sparrow has a grey cap on the head although there are other differences as well. However in looking at a number of photos said to be house sparrows some seem to be more like the maya. I thought that the common Philippine sparrow was called the maya maya but that is in fact a type of fish! One source I looked at identifies the maya as the European Tree Sparrow. In the second house sparrow the grey cap is very prominent more than in most sparrows I see here.

My Philippine Bird Feeder

I set up a makeshift feeding arrangement on the platform on top of the house from which I regularly watch Mayon volcano. We bought some bird seed but it is probably for fighting cocks or something! I have not seen a regular bird seeder ever in the Philippines. When we asked about bird seed at the Mall we were steered to an agricultural supply store!
So far I have not actually observed any birds feeding from the wide plastic cap we are using for the seed. We also have a bowl with water. Some seed spilled and was gone the next day so I assume it may have been eaten. On the other hand maybe the maid swept it up. I have seen a few maya land nearby but they are frightened by my presence.
The common sparrow here is the Europena tree sparrow rather than the house sparrow as in Manitoba. The house sparrow has a grayish head whereas the tree sparrow has a brown head. There are other differences but they do look quite similar.

No new birds

This is a rather fuzzy pic of a few redpolls at the feeder. Only redpolls, a few chickadees and one lone housesparrow are visiting today. We will be leaving for the Philippines the end of this week. I was hoping a few different birds might appear before we leave. I will try to post a few items about birds I see in the Philippines but I may have trouble identifying them.

Our house is in Legazpi with a view of the Mayon volcano. The most common bird is a type of house sparrow that looks much like our common house sparrow.