Have you checked to see if any of the cones have seeds. This may be your squirrels way of telling you to get them some feed. My squirrels will have problems because the Easter week freeze zapped all of the acorns. What few nuts I have seen have no meats.

I'm guessing they do have something to eat in them as we've watched them chow down on them. They leave quite a pile of leftovers!

Has anyone noticed that there are fewer and fewer goldfiches at the feeders.

Wow, those squirrels are collecting a lot of cones! I've read that they like to horde large caches of food. I find the red squirrels to be very entertaining. Such noisy, hyper little squirrels.

I haven't noticed any particular signs of an impending winter yet.

Goldfinches and Pine Siskins are pretty susceptible to catching salmonella poisoning via feeders that aren't cleaned very regularly - much more regularly than most folks want to bother with. We found that we couldn't clean our feeders often enough so we quit using feeders. I now spread sunflower seed into a 20 foot Blue Spruce via a tall orchard ladder (3 legs). I do this around 2 to 3 weeks apart with about 2 gallons of seeds. We see the finches, and others, less often but we do see them regularly. Right now the finches are going after the sunflowers we planted this year. Since we also have Coopers Hawks in our area the Blue Spruce method offers the birds that feed there more protection.
Steve Baran - Chattaroy, WA

Not only cold but a early winter. Canadian Geese are already flying over my house heading South for the winter. Squirrels are very busy these days collecting food for the long winter months to come. Robins are flocking together ready to head South.
Yep going to be a cold early winter in my parts of the woods.

Had the first flight of blackbirds come through yesterday morning. Normal time mid October and stay for several days. They left sometime last night. A while ago I was eating dinner watching a flock of robins eating on the poke berries. I did notice something strange though most robins have similar coloration but these had all kinds of color differences in the group, white streaks on breasts, dark heads and heads with little color, some had what looked like ruffs going around the necks, some had very light colored heads. There was even one that used it's tail like a mockingbird to sit on the light line. When the line wiggled his tail would be cocked under the line for balance.

Any idea's on this mixed robin flock. And no I waited until after I came inside to eat my rum ball.

On the robins I'm guessing that some are in molt right now and shedding a few feathers. The older feathers will have sun damage and wear and be lighter colored. There can be quite a difference between the new and old feathers giving them an overall peculiar look.

Search for the word "molt" at the link I've included. It says that they may be just finishing their flight feather molt and in the midst of their body feather molt.

There's also the possibility that they got into something - wet paint????

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: North American Robin

Most were smooth feathered not rough as during molt. If they got into paint they wandered into a spray it.