Has anyone one else notice what look like a decline in their numbers. I don't see near the near the flocks I did a few years back and a lot of the flocks are small at that.

I sure don't see the flocks of blackbirds I once did. Missing piece of winter here.

Look like some one been feeding them some bad bird seeds.

a dozen out here on the deck right now with them pointy,sharp looking beaks just destroying a frozen suet cake.

Seeing starling here and blackbirds in large numbers earlier heading South, people I talk to are finding the starlings that stuck around dying from the cold when it hits sub-zero.

IMO all the Starlings can die off or fly back to Europe. They are hard on our native cavity nesting birds.

there long,narrow,pointy beaks both intrigue me and other than woodpeckers would be the last bird i'd want peckin at me.the piliated woodpeckers i watch all the time still lead the pack.swear i get a headache just watching them.

Also English Sparrows and cowbirds are hard on other birds here. Sparrows with take over martin gores.

pcr2 I had a redbird bite me one time---you won't forget that one. lol

West Nile

Blackbirds since you mentioned it seemed to be less numbers last fall.

I was to the ranch yesterday and saw 5 robins. I was very surprised with the extreme cold and wind chills we have had this winter. It isn't unusual to see them in the heavy wooded areas though, this time of year.

Guys we still got flocks of those type of song birds around here....can't figure out why they haven't flown South.

No wher neer the numbers of 40 years ago.
Use to have those long strings fly in every fall when they were migrating.
Strings were miles long.

We were kids and had them plastic bows and would go out back and shoot an arrow up thru the string.
Had two chances to hit one, one on the way up and one when the arrow came back down thru.
Got hairy a couple times when an arrow stuck in the ground beside ya! lol

For the record, i never hit one. Amazed me too

45-50 years ago we had very few starlings here. They have exploded though in the last 25 years or so. Major pest for me as a fruit grower. Plus they spread blackberry seeds all over the place that sprout up into jungles if you're not on top of it. Blackbird numbers have dropped in about the same proportion as the increase in starlings.

The black birds get in the sunflowers here in ND during the fall. I have seen fields with 100,000 birds in them. I can't say I felt there was any less last fall. They are starting to work on corn here too. They used to just work the corn in the milk. but now they are sticking to it longer and taking up to 3/4s the ear. They will clean a quarter of sunflowers to the point it isn't worth combining.

More Red-winged Blackbirds the past few years here in SE WI than I have seen in decades. Seems there's hardly a cattail without a Blackbird hanging on it, lol.

Grackles are holding their own. Thankfully the Starlings are a lot less.

Last three years more Robins are hanging on through the winter. Time was when the Robins showed up in Spring we were due for one or two good winter storms and then the thaw would begin. Always cheered me up seeing the first Robins of Spring.

Dunno when they started overwintering. I don't remember seeing Robins during winters in WI during the 70s, 80s or 90s. Always been outdoors a ton and try to pay attention to it all. So I should have noticed them. Anyhow, just saw a flock of a dozen yesterday and we've been having days in the teens and nights near or below zero. Crabapples and Viburnum berries are getting very scarce. Dunno what else they're living on.

I can remember robins staying all winter at least in the 90s, maybe further back. As far as I know they always have, I think it may be somewhat regional.

Starlings are a bird even the Audubon Society struggles to find anything positive about.

I live in the upper peninsula of Michigan and have never seen starlings here in the winter. This year we've got them at the bird feeders.

The sparrows around here will destroy a robin nest, we always had a robin build a nest on our porch every spring. I watched sparrows destroy the nest and break the eggs this past spring, making to robin nest elsewhere, I declared war on the sparrows by buying a pellet gun and shooting 28 of them with it!

Shoot em and use them come winter for cats and fox.

That’s a good idea!

When i was a teen, you could set your watch by the movement of a huge local flock that flew to their roostimg spot each afternoon. I think it may have taken 10 minutes for that flock to fly over the woods where I hunted. They would leap frog, sort of. I think the flock wasy a mixture of cowbirds, starlings, and redwing blackbirds.

I would deer hunt in the woods until they arrived and use the cover of the noise they made to slip to a field to hunt until dark.

Where I grew up in Springdale, Ohio we had a large woods across the street and a woods on the side of our property with lots of bush honey suckle. We got clouds of starlings and blackbirds in the Fall. They were so loud you had to shout and stand close by anyone you wanted to talk to outside, in the evenings, during the migration. In the honey suckle thickets, there were dead and dieing birds every few feet and poop 2 inches deep. Our neighbor, who was named Robin, was terrified of the birds. She would clap her hands and scream out her windows, all around her house and then run to her car, when the birds thinned out a little.

Usually there are a lot of starlings on my farm during the Winter. This Winter there is much fewer starlings.

There also are considerably fewer crows. I dislike starlings and like the crows. The crows keep the hawks away, while they nest here. I have had as many as 11 crows nests and 30 some crows, stay here in the Spring. Last year I only found 3 crows nests and had round a dozen crows, that stayed here.

Keith