the Way of the Turtle

FEATHERED FRIENDS
Saturday, January 10, 2014

Since moving the bird feeders to the back yard, I've seen very little variety in the visitors to it... so much so that two days ago when I heard a caller on the radio say that he wondered where all the house sparrows in his yard had gone, I wished I could call up and reassure him that they were all currently camped out in my neighborhood. It's not uncommon to look out and see 40 or so of them covering the three feeders and the ground underneath.

Thankfully I do get a few other birds coming to enjoy the free food, and I even get to see them occasionally. The cardinals seem to mainly visit very early in the morning. Occasionally I have some mourning doves under the feeders; this afternoon when I went out to fill them, half a dozen flew up into the tree in the back. I've seen a couple of blue jays every once in a while, and there's a downy woodpecker that comes and pecks at the suet cake occasionally too. More recently I've been pleased to see a group of juncos as well.

And of course there are up to half a dozen very fat squirrels, though usually there are only two or three out there at a time.

Haven't seen any chicadees, which is odd, since they would visit when the feeder was out front - perhaps they don't make the trip to the backyard, or perhaps the sparrows have out-competed them.

I do wish my bedroom window was better designed... there's no way to raise/lower the screen, which means it's almost impossible to get pictures of the birds when they visit.

JMH