Saturday, January 17, 2009

great birdfeeder





Here are actual photos of my birds on the new feeder, somewhat fuzzy, and taken through glass with some reflections from within the room. On the upper left and on the bottom tray are goldfinches, upper right is a titmouse, and at the lower right is a confusing superposition of a Harris' sparrow and a cardinal. They eat up the supply pretty rapidly; it looks like I may need to refill weekly or even more often. A 25-lb. sack of sunflower seeds every month won't break me. But it sure will leave a pile of seed-coats on the ground underneath!

The cardinals often pose in the late afternoon sunlight. I may do some thinning of the yaupon, privet, hackberry, plum thicket, but I will certainly leave plenty of perches.



I have heard the s-s-see, s-s-see of waxwings, though I haven't looked the right direction to see them yet. These are the yaupon berries that draw them. (These are last year's, but there is a good crop this year also, somewhat unusually; often a poor crop alternates with a good crop.) A flock of waxwings will descend in a flurry onto the yaupons and stuff themselves madly with berries, then on some signal they will swirl up into the bare oak, where they will sit motionless, all facing the same direction, for 20 minutes, digesting. Any lawn furniture below will be liberally purple-spotted.

Labels: , , , ,