Birds that Visit our Feeder, Ohio/WV Border Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. These black birds have bluish iridescent heads, yellow eyes and long tails. They would descend on the feeder in a noisy flock, chasing every other bird away and gulping down seed till it seemed they were all we were feeding. Their calls sounded like a rusty hinge. What are they?

Answer: grackles

Grr... Grackles! They'd be such pretty birds, with their sleek, shiny heads and upper bodies, if they just weren't so bossy! And greedy! After finally getting a feeder designed to keep them away and using more safflower seed which is less attractive to them, we rarely see them at the feeder anymore. Apparently they can gather in huge flocks in winter, but we only notice a few on warmer winter days.

2. These little year-round birds are mostly brown with a lovely splash of light red over the head and chest, though some are yellowish. The females tend to be duller. I had never seen them out in the country, but they love our feeder in town. What are they?

Answer: house finches

Apparently house finches like suburbs and cities more than the true countryside, but what surprised me is they're new here! They used to be only western birds, but they were introduced in New York around 1940, when pet shop owners released illegal birds to avoid prosecution.

They naturalized in New York, spread, and fifty years later, they joined the western flocks on the great plains. They first showed up in Ohio circa 1980. No wonder I hadn't noticed them, when we lived in town around here back in the 1970s!

3. This woodpecker loves our suet. It has a red head and a bit of red on its belly, and the usual speckled black and white wings. It's about the size of a downy woodpecker, certainly not like a big pileated woodpecker. What is it?

Answer: red-bellied woodpecker

Who names these woodpeckers? The first thing I noticed was the red patch on the top of its head extending to the back of the neck. Then, yes, I saw a little tiny bit of red on its belly. It's a red-bellied woodpecker but you have to look! Apparently it has been gradually expanding its range northward, currently covering most of the US southeast but pushing into New England and southern Canada too.

It visits year round, eating suet from our feeder and nibbling on the dried fruit too.

4. This little bird has a black cap and says its name when it gives its call. We see it in winter but it doesn't visit in summer. What is it?

Answer: chickadee

I'll sometimes hear the cheery sound of "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" and know to look out the window at a black-capped chickadee who has come to get some suet or seeds. They go north in the summer, but come here to our feeder on the Ohio/West Virginia border in the winter. We are apparently right on the southern edge of their breeding range.

5. This medium-sized black bird has tiny white speckles on its feathers in winter and a more iridescent plumage in summer. All the birds are descended from a deliberate release in New York City. They gather in flocks like the grackle but fortunately haven't found our feeder in great numbers, though some people complain. What is it?

Answer: starling

The US really needs a naturalized example of every bird mentioned in Shakespeare. That's important, right? Right? Well, I don't think so either, but that was the purpose of releasing European starlings in New York City in the 19th Century, and they have since spread coast to coast and to Canada too.

They can be troublesome in large flocks. We've just been lucky at our feeder to only get a few token examples. They have a wide variety of calls, full of mimicry, but otherwise aren't any prettier than the native grackle.

6. This big red bird with the red crest and the black mask around his beak can hardly compete with the little birds, because he needs to balance on the perch that's really too small for him. But we're glad he manages. His mate is a much duller red. Who is he?

Answer: cardinal

The cardinal is the state bird of both Ohio and West Virginia, and five other nearby states too: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia. The cardinal lets us know he's arrived at the feeder with his "pip -- pip -- pip" sound, but when he's out perched on something, he has a variety of songs.

7. This bird is almost too big to fit on the feeder, but he tries. He's blue and white, with black trim and a bit of a crest, and a raucous voice. What is he?

Answer: bluejay

A female blue jay may look the same or just a little bit duller than the male. They can be raucous, noisy and bossy toward other birds and even pets, but we enjoy one or two that occasionally visit the feeder. Bluejays live year-round over most of the eastern United States and sometimes west of the Mississippi.

They are reported to migrate in large numbers around the east sometimes, never completely abandoning their range, but we have not noticed any seasonal increase or decrease here in Ohio/West Virginia.

They like both suet and seeds, and in the wild their diet is mostly seeds.

8. This grayish brown bird prefers to waddle around on the ground under the feeder, picking up what other birds have dropped, announcing its presence before landing on the ground with its familiar "coo-ah coo coo coo." What is it?

Answer: mourning dove

The mourning dove lives over most of the United States except the northern Rockies, and it sometimes breeds there as well as southern Canada. It lives year-round here on the Ohio/West Virginia border. Apparently the habit of eating seeds off the ground under a bird feeder is a common one.

It can swallow extra food to fill its crop, then digest it later at its leisure. It also swallows small gravel, or grit, to help it break up hard seeds.

9. This little blue-gray crested visitor is about the size of a chickadee, and is related to it. What is it?

Answer: tufted titmouse

The tufted titmouse is a year round visitor in most of the eastern U.S. except the far northern New England area, and it's expanding there too. Birdwatchers think birdfeeders may be helping it expand further north, which it has been doing steadily over the last few decades. It likes sunflower seeds and suet at feeders, but likes insects in its wild diet, as well as seeds and berries.

10. This unwelcome visitor to our bird feeder (notice I said "visitor," not "bird") has a long fluffy gray tail and a furry gray body. It loves seeds and nuts as much as birds do. It took some work to finally exclude it from the feeder. What is it?

Answer: squirrel

A gray squirrel regularly visited the nut trees in the neighborhood, then crossed the road and made a stop at our feeder. We were lucky that there's at most a handful of squirrels, and they were discouraged by the simple tricks of hanging the feeder on a long wire, with an anti-squirrel wire cage around it. We also switched to a lot of safflower seed to discourage grackles, and discovered it disappoints squirrels too.

Some people with feeders fight squirrel thieves endlessly. There are baffles that can be added to dump squirrels as they climb down, and many other tricks.

Source: Author littlepup

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor guitargoddess before going online.
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These are birds that have come to our feeder, during the first full year we had it up. We live on the border of Ohio and West Virginia in a small town, but these seem to be pretty common for this whole area.

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