Cold weather up North is pushing birds into South Florida.

 
With all of the cold weather that the Northeast is experiencing (January, 2016) many bird species are passing through the area.  Hummingbirds are here anyway from September to April, but lately goldfinches, various warblers, robins, cedar waxwings, redtail hawks, and several bald eagles have passed overhead.

The eagles are hard to tell from vultures at first, but watch and you will see them in pairs.  They stay together, rarely flap their wings, often fly in a straight line, although they may circle too, and occasionally call a distinct, high pitched chek, chek... che eh hik.

Donna noticed that the gold finches land in our oaks and pick off and eat the lobate lac scale and other insects.  This is why it is so important to provide habitat for migrating birds.  You can see the results of the 50 percent loss of these birds over the last 50 years. The plants around us are often covered with introduced insect pests. These suck the sap and poop the extra sugar water onto the leaves below. This sugar water gets moldy and turns black.

If you have a cat outside, it is killing one bird or more a week.  Over four billion birds are killed each year in the U.S. by 80 million outdoors cats. One way to at least help control cat predation is to limb up you trees and shrubs to keep cats from hiding in them.

One customer had a neighbor's cat hide in a firespike bush and catch a hummingbird. This is why I feel that a native Firebush, or a Pavonia kept tall is better than some trendy exotic that lures our wildlife to ground level.

This picture has a hummer feeding from the tight flower of a pavonia.  There is a lot of nectar in each flower and they don't stop flowering like the firebush does after a cold snap.  By the way, firebush likes full sun and will continue to flower in winter rather than  lose many leaves and look horrible until spring when growing in shade.

So look up often during these cold spells and you may see an eagle, flock of robins or cedar waxwings and maybe some goldfinches.  The warblers, vireos, catbirds and other migrants will be in the trees, shrubs and ground around you.  And keep your cat indoors; it isn't too old, small, nice or uninterested to kill an unaware bird.