Sleek and elegant with brilliant yellow-orange heads and bodies, Hooded Orioles arrive in your yard, looking for fresh nectar and bugs. They might even visiting your hummingbird feeders. They are followed closely by their cousins, the stockier but equally bright yellow Bullock's Orioles. Both Orioles' black-and-white-streaked wings stand out against their striking yellow or orange. An Oriole feeder has larger ports than a hummingbird feeder and has small wells to hold the berry jelly.

Left: Female and male Hooded Orioles love the jelly on an oriole feeder

With its black head and wings, orange collar and big patch of orange on its rump, the male Black-headed Grosbeaks are moving into the area this month. The female, is less showy, with brown wings and a pale breast, but can be distinguished by her long white eyebrow. Their sturdy beaks enable them to crack big seeds and access a wide variety of foods, though our Supreme Mix might be their ideal feed.    

It's spring, and love is in the air, which means that the birds who come to your feeders will start to pair off and mate. Winter brings a lot of flocks to feeders, often interesting mixes of various Sparrows, Bushtits, House Finches and even some Warblers. A big flock will raid a feeder, then move on. But in spring birds start looking for mates, and the flocks diminish in size. You will see mostly pairs, testing the food, then settling on your feeder and scouting the bushes for good nesting spots. Add foods with extra calcium for strong egg shells.

      Right: A Townsend's Warbler could be looking for a mate

Project FeederWatch continues into April. Though you may not have had time to watch the birds at your feeder, it  is not too late to start. Any observations are useful to bird researchers. If you are not sure how to being, check the FeederWatch web site to review how to observe the birds and report your findings.

If you have put up nesting boxes for them, the Bluebirds should be showing up already. To keep them around, now is the time to put out their favorite food, mealworms. Soon they will be filling the nesting boxes with five or six of their delicate blue eggs. When those eggs hatch, starting in April, Bluebirds parents—and all the other new bird parents--really will need those mealworms, their best source of protein for their chicks

Left: Two chicks beg their Western Bluebird parent for a worm

Two very different birds—gorgeous hard-to-miss Northern Flickers and tiny olive-gray Ruby-crowned Kinglets—are likely to stop by your suet feeders. The weather still is cool, and suet is their best source of extra fat to make it through cool nights. The Flickers actually are woodpeckers, pecking on tree trunks for worms and grubs, though they occasionally forage on the ground for insects. The beautiful red swash on their cheeks announces that they are western Flickers, compared to their “yellow-shafted” Eastern cousins.

                              Right: A young Hummingbird tries out a feeder for the first time

It's amazing the birds as small as hummingbirds start to nest in January, the coldest month. But that's why March produces a large number of Anna's and Allen's Hummingbird fledglings, learning to fly and occasionally tumbling out of nests. If you spot a fluffy little one on the ground, you can help. Gently move the fledgling into your hand and try to place it somewhere up high. If a parent can see the baby, it will feed the little one for a couple of days until it can fly on its own.

They're small and an ordinary gray. Their most dramatic feature is a bright white ring around their eyes. But, if you look closely at your bushes, you may spot a pair of California Gnatcatchers, soft-gray and white gleaners with a jaunty black cap on the males. They work the lower branches, clearing out as many bugs as they can. They also might build a soft little cup of a nest, also low,

Lesser Goldfinches are gathering nesting materials. They will need nyjer and sunflower chips as the build the nest, lay eggs and raise their young.