Backyard Bird Watching

Why hawks scream, what each call means, when they’re loudest, and how to tell a red-tailed hawk from a red-shouldered hawk or a blue jay faking it.

The birds you’ll see in a Minnesota yard in winter, summer and year-round, how to identify them, and what to feed them.

Dark-eyed juncos, the winter snowbirds, arrive under feeders across the U.S. from late September to March. How to identify them, when they come and go, and the small seed and ground feeding that keeps them in your yard.

Grackles flock in fall for safety from hawks, to find scattered food, and to share a warm roost before heading south. Here is when the flocks form, how big they get, and how long they will stay at your feeder.

Grackles eat grain and seed most of the year, animals in summer, and anything on the ground all year. What they eat at feeders, what they skip (safflower, nyjer), and why that is the fix.

East of the Rockies a small gray bird with a crest is almost always a tufted titmouse. Here is how to tell it from the other titmice, bushtits, phainopepla, catbirds and juncos, by region.

Yellow eye and long tail is a grackle; red shoulder is a red-winged blackbird; short tail and speckles is a starling; brown head is a cowbird. How to tell the four apart and what each means for your feeder.