Birding

We love to travel to find new birds and participate in a lot of bird counts. We also created a Guide to Birding Field Guides and host a collection of over 300 birding links from all over the globe.

Conservation

While our main focus continues to be birds, we are working to promote other areas of conservation. Conserving land not only benefits wildlife, but is hugely beneficial to people as well.

Outdoors

We love all sorts of outdoor activities, especially hiking and spend a lot of time outside with dogs and horses. We are working to produce more articles on all sorts of outdoor fun!

Photography

Every week we bring you Bird Photography Weekly. We periodically talk about our adventures in digiscoping. Feel free to browse our photo lifelist.

Article in: Birding

Callaway Nature Preserve – January Update

For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Callaway Nature Preserve (CNP) is our name for our backyard. We have been diligently converting the yard from a grassy waste to a bird paradise. The CNP is located in the city of Rockford, Illinois (population 150,000+) and is only a 1/4 acre in size, but has attracted over 80 species of birds in the last 3 years. (The most recent new bird was a Wilson’s Warbler in September 2006).

CNP in Winter
January at the Callaway Nature Preserve

Our goal this year is 60 species, a lofty goal but we’ve been improving the landscape and watching much more intensely each year. The list so far, as of January 30, 2007 is as follows:

1. Red-tailed Hawk (year of the Red-tail, our first bird of 2007)
2. Black-capped Chickadee
3. Blue Jay
4. White-breasted Nuthatch
5. Mourning Dove
6. Cooper’s Hawk
7. Northern Cardinal
8. American Goldfinch
9. House Finch
10. Dark-eyed Junco
11. Downy Woodpecker
12. Red-bellied Woodpecker
13. American Crow
14. Canada Goose (flyover)
15. European Starling
16. House Sparrow

16/60 (26.7% of our goal) with 11 months left to go.

We also spotted a CNP first, a small group of Northern Flying Squirrels. Judging by the amounts of bird seed they consume, and their attempts at “flying”, they must think they are birds.

No Comments or Trackbacks   ↓ Jump to add comment ↓

No comments yet; please add yours below:

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment