Eight Common Winter Backyard Birds

It's delightful to be able to look out into our backyard on a cold, snowy winter day, and see the birds that have stayed around during these harsher months. 

They're not as numerous or as vocal as they are during the warmer months, and there isn't as much variety, but they're a joy to watch, flitting around in the bushes, hopping around the ground, or visiting our bird feeders.  They add interest to an otherwise quiet, cold, and often cloudy winter day in our area.

Most of our winter backyard birds are also here during the summer, although there are a few species that migrate to or through our area during the winter.    Some of our year-round birds have a duller coloration during the winter, and most are quieter than during the warmer months.   Birds sing to attract mates and to defend their territories -- neither of which they need to do during the winter.  But we still hear some of the friendly chatter of a few birds during the winter, when they flock together to find food.

The birds I'm featuring here are common to SE Michigan during the winter, but they're also common to many other areas of North America during the cold months.

(Photo of male Northern Cardinal by Heather (hlkljgk), CC BY-SA 2.0)

The male Northern Cardinal, with its bright red color and jaunty crest, is my favorite winter bird, although the female is very pretty as well.  If you live in the central and Eastern parts of the United States,  most likely you're familiar with this striking bird.

The male cardinal is red, with a crest and bold black coloring around the face, and the female is mostly tan with some reddish coloring in the crest and wings.   She also has a red beak.  Both the male and female Northern Cardinal stand out brightly against a drab winter background.

While we commonly see cardinals in the winter, we don't  hear much from them until sometime in February, when they start singing again.   That's a very early sign of spring in our area!  These brilliantly colored birds stay in our area year round.

Note the male cardinal above and below left, and the female cardinal below to the right.

The black-capped chickadee is undeniably cute, with its trademark black cap and throat, gray wings, and light belly.  This is another bird that we see year round.   If you live in the northern U.S. and southern Canada, you will have seen this cute little bird.  (Other species of chickadees have ranges north and south of this range, with some overlapping.)

Chickadees are very curious, and will come investigate people, especially if we're holding a few tasty black sunflower seeds in our hands.  Another way to attract them closer to us is to make a soft "shwishhing" sound.  Perhaps they think there's a succulent insect nearby!

We start to hear the chickadee spring song, a 2 or 3 note whistle (fee bee, or hey sweetie), in late winter or even in mid-winter on a sunny day.   The chickadee call (different than its song) gives the bird its name, "Chick-a-dee-dee-dee".

House sparrows do well wherever humans live.   Where you find human communities, you'll find house sparrows.  They're found in most of North America, as well as many other places in the world.   Because they're so common, we tend to ignore them, or shoo them away to try to attract other birds, but they're fun to watch anyway.   The males are more boldly patterned than the females (see photo examples below). 

House sparrows don't really have much of a "song", but a plain, bright congenial-sounding chatter that I find appealing, especially when a small flock of house sparrows are chattering together in the bushes on a sunny winter's day.

House finches at first glance look similar to house sparrows, except the males have a rosy red coloration around the face and chest.   Female house finches are more of a nondescript gray brown with streaks.  During the summer the males have a lovely, long jumbled warbling song, but they're quiet during the winter.

House finches are originally from the west coast of the U.S., but were introduced in Long Island in the 1940's and have thrived and spread across most of the country since then.   I don't remember seeing house finches in our area until the early 1990's, but they're very common now at our feeders throughout the year.

Did you know that the red pigment of the male house finch feathers comes from the food he eats?   Some males are more yellow or orange than reddish, depending on their diet.

Downy woodpeckers are small birds that like to hang out with other small birds such as chickadees and nuthatches.  We often see all three species at our bird feeders during the winter and summer. 

Male downy woodpeckers have a small bright splash of red at the back of their head -- otherwise both male and female look alike.

When our boys were in early grade school, I went along on a winter outdoor school field trip with them, and we were able to attract these pretty little birds and chickadees to eat sunflower seeds out of our hands.  What a treat!

We see white-breasted nuthatches all year round in Michigan, but red breasted nuthatches only are around for the winter.  Both are small, agile birds that like insects and seeds.  During the winter they rely mostly on seeds.  Whereas most birds stand with their heads up, nuthatches will perch or stand with heads up, sideways, or down (as in the photos below).  Red-breasted nuthatches have a black cheek stripe and are a little smaller than their white-breasted cousins.

These small birds may also flock with other small birds such as chickadees and downy woodpeckers.

We see these common, soft-gray colored sparrows on the ground during the winter, foraging for whatever has been pushed off the feeders by other birds or squirrels.  

In general, dark-eyed juncos have dark gray backs and heads, and light-colored bellies, although there's a fair amount of variation in their plumage.  Males tend to be a little darker than female juncos.

Although they may be seen year round in northern Michigan, we generally see them only during the winter in southern Michigan.

Male American Goldfinches are hard to miss during the summer with their flashy bright yellow and black plumage, but may be overlooked during the fall and winter when they're an unremarkable drab gray-green.  Females are an olive color during the summer, and more nondescript during the winter like the males.

The American Goldfinch is the only finch that molts twice a year -- once in the late winter, and again in the late summer.

We see them at the bird feeders year round, but especially during the winter when food is scarce elsewhere.

While the birds featured on this page are among the most common birds we see during the winter in our own backyard in SE Michigan, there are a number more that we also see, including:

Mourning Dove

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Tufted Titmouse

Blue Jay

European Starling

American Crow

and even sometimes the American Robin (visit Robin in Summer, Robin in Winter)