This year has been somewhat different than the past two or three as far as bird populations are concerned. There was a period of a couple of weeks in the middle of fall when there were hardly any birds around at all. Even my always present cardinals and chickadees were few and far between. We had very few American robins migrating through this fall, but some of our other winter birds arrived fairly early, but with one notable exception. There have been no chipping sparrows (Spizella passerina). Up until the end of December there were none at all. Then I started seeing one every now and then. Finally, today I saw several of them together. They still aren’t here in the numbers that I usually see, but I was happy to finally be seeing some.

Right now a large winter storm is slowly making its way across the United States, and I suspect that some of these birds are moving into this area to avoid the worst of it. Even the regular populations seem to be able to sense that this cold weather is on its way. They were all out in force this morning diving into all the food that I provided in both feeding locations. That made it a great day for birding and I saw more individual birds and species of birds than I usually do. It will be interesting to see if the chipping sparrows stay on for a while after the storm moves out or if they will take off again as soon as the weather warms up.