For those of you who don't feed the birds, I highly recommend it. I have spent many hours on the weekend just watching the comings and goings . It seems to be on par with petting the dogs as far as bringing down the blood pressure a bit. Anyway, here are some observations about the life of birds and their friends, the squirrels:1. Blue Jays will kill you for a peanut. It is best just to run.
2. Black Capped Chickadees are a squirrel's best friend. Since the squirrels are unable to reach the feeders, they hang out at the base waiting for scraps. When Mr. Chickadee comes to the feeder, he throws out whatever he doesn't like that is in the way of what he does want. This would be the human equivalent of going to a buffet and throwing the ribs on floor on your way to the General Tso chicken. Anyway, the squirrels get all excited when food drops from heaven above.
3. Fat is law in squirrel country. The fatter you are the scarier you are to other squirrels. The fattest squirrel wins all duels. Some days, I wish we could generalize this to human affairs. I hold great power in such a fantasy.
4. Speaking of fat squirrels, does anyone know what the maximum weight ever recorded for a squirrel is? I think we've got some two pounders out there. They've got big guts and fat asses. Am I related?
5. Dark Eyed Juncos are the squirrels of the bird world. They can certainly fly to the feeders but prefer to hop around on the ground with the squirrels. They don't get as much food as the other birds and they seem to make room when they see a large furry ass headed their way. This makes me feel sorry for them and go scatter seed on the ground. I'm a sucker. I'm sure this is all well thought out on their part and I'm just an easy target.
6. Nuthatches are cool. Not only are they pretty, they seem to spend most of their time upside down. I guess this behavior allows them to see bugs and other things most upright birds miss. Ingenious.
7. We can have up to a dozen Cardinals at any given time in our yard. They jump around between drinking at the pond and eating from the feeders. We have several pines and arborvitae nearby which is ideal cardinal habitat. I understand that some people really need to work at attracting cardinals to their feeders. This includes the owner of the wild bird store where I buy my food. It drives her crazy when I tell her about our cardinals. So, I do it every time I visit.
7 comments:
Every time you visit. That is just evil... I love it. I used to feed the birds but I got tired of the crap that grew up around the bottom of the bird feeder every spring. I will watch yours vicariously. Great picture. J-bear (I used to be j-bird but you understand the implications now that you have seen a Jay in action. Happy Thanksgiving.
If you can get your hands on a baby monitor you can put it by your feeder and listen while you watch. I was going to do that with ours but the kids decided to "play" with it and then it was no longer working. Strange how that happens in our house.
The blue jays can be pretty nasty. Neighbours two yards over feed the birds but luckily they all seem to stop in my back yard coming and going, it can be quite a sight.
I miss feeding the birds - is was such a great show. Now it would become a horror slasher movie since we have cats. I found that pure black sunflower seed and niger seed was all I needed to attract every species. They just throw the millet on the ground.
Michael-Your feeder looks so inviting that I want perch and nibble-unfortunately there is probably a wieght limit to the feeder. Love you!
Lil Sis- I'll put a plate with some nice cheeses and fruit out for you, but on the ground. Not sure either how the whole perching to feed business would go.
The feeders look awesome! I mentioned on my blog that M and I made bird suet Sunday night and I joked that the birds in our neighborhood will likely have the highest cholesterol of any bird anywhere else! ESpecially the wood peckers - we have all kinds on them. I hope they will not be too fat to take flight by the end of the winter! They must to a fly by and think, "Well what'll we have today? Subway or Big Mac?
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