Birds at the new feeder

I promise this will be my last post on bird feeding for a while. I met the Blight Department’s deadline Thursday and had only two feeders in the yard, consisting of one sunflower seed caged mesh tube and the recycled plastic suet feeder. It was the coldest day of the season and I felt awful, but decided to fight back by buying two new feeders. One is a hopper with suet cages on either side, so that’s two feeders in one, and the other is a fancy-dancy squirrel-proof thistle feeder, not that I’ve ever seen a squirrel eat thistle, but it protects the seed nicely and nyjer seed can get to be pretty ratty in a sock or a plastic tube exposed to the elements.

Chickadee on the new hopper.

I saw all the regulars today, but did not get pictures of everyone. It may take the cardinals a few days to figure out the hopper, but the chickadees were delighted with it. One even sang to me this afternoon and I whistled his tune back to him.

Goldfinch on the new feeder.

The new thistle feeder will take some getting used to but there were finches on it and the seed went down a bit, so they’ll have all week to perfect their technique. It provides perch opportunities for more birds than any one thistle sock or upside-down feeder.

A male house finch came to check out the new situation and when I started taking his picture he looked at me quizzically, a bit exasperated, like how many more do you want?

Male House Finch

On the ground, of course, the clean up crew did a fine job. I was happy to see a Mourning Dove. I don’t think there are as many as I used to see, thanks to the local hawks.

Mourning Dove

I had four fox squirrels and two grey squirrels this morning. Here’s one of each.

Fox Squirrel

Grey Squirrel

I have a few more feeders coming to alternate with the two new ones. It was probably time to clean up my act anyway.