This week is much too warm for snow in Pittsburgh but we can dream as we listen to seasonal music. A favorite is Winter Wonderland, written in Pennsylvania in 1934, that includes these famous lines:

Gone away is the bluebird 
here to stay is a new bird.  
He sings a love song 
as we go along 
walking in a winter wonderland.”  
— Winter Wonderland

Back then eastern bluebirds left northern Pennsylvania in the winter but a new bird had arrived and its population was growing. The song’s writer, Richard Bernhard Smith, may have been referring to northern cardinals.

Originally from the South, cardinals arrived in Pennsylvania in the early 1900s in response to habitat change and warmer winters. As soon as they could survive year-round this new bird was here to stay.

By now our climate is so much warmer that Carolina wrens, Carolina chickadees and red-bellied woodpeckers are additional new birds in Pennsylvania. Nowadays bluebirds linger until it’s quite cold in Honesdale, PA, the town that inspired the song.

New birds find it easy to stay in our not-so-wintry wonderland.

(photo by Steve Gosser)

If you’re from Pennsylvania you may not realize we have few woodpecker species compared to the western states of California, Oregon and Washington.

Sixteen of North America’s 22 woodpecker species regularly occur in the Pacific states while only seven occur in Pennsylvania. Five of our species are also found out west though the yellow-bellied sapsucker is rare.

Let’s take a look at western woodpeckers compared to Pennsylvania’s.

With the most habitat diversity and a lot of trees, California wins the prize in the western woodpecker tableau.

(photos by Pati Rouzer, Patty McGann, Andy Reago & Chrissy McLaren, Mick Thompson (Creative Commons licenses on Flickr), and by Steve Valasek)

Where are the purple finches, pine siskins, and red-breasted nuthatches this winter? Where are the evening grosbeaks?

If you’ve noticed a lack of winter finches in the eastern U.S. this autumn you’re not mistaken. They’re staying up north.

In his 2019-2020 Winter Finch Forecast Ron Pittaway explained that seed and fruit crops in northern Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland are exceptionally abundant this year. The winter finches have enough to eat so they’re staying home. Here’s who’s not coming to visit, not even to southern Ontario:

• Pine grosbeaks
• Purple finches: They usually come south, but not this year.
• Red and white-winged crossbills
• Common and hoary redpolls
• Pine siskins
• Evening grosbeaks
• Red-breasted nuthatches
• Bohemian waxwings
• Even blue jays will be less abundant because many are staying north.

If you want to see these species you’ll have to go to Algonquin Provincial Park or watch them online at Ontario FeederWatch, a backyard camera in the Thunder Bay region.

The evening grosbeaks pictured above came to the Ontario FeederWatch platform feeder on 28 October 2019. (Click here for the video.)

Get your winter finch fix at Cornell Lab’s Ontario Feederwatch.

(screenshot from Ontario Feederwatch)