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| Squirrels love bird feeders. |
We have had a bird feeder at our house for years and years. While we have never reached the number of visitors we had at our old house, we have enjoyed watching our feathered friends here.
However, the last three years have seen an unwelcome trend. Late summer, the birds stop showing up and stay away until spring. This includes all of the birds that don't migrate. It's as if the bird community has a meeting and says that they are done with our feeder and move on to other things. We still see plenty of birds around, just not at our feeder. I asked Aunt Martha, my bird expert, for insight, and she said maybe the neighbors had put up more feeders.
When it happened again this year, we did our standard. We cleaned the feeder and filled it with fresh food. No takers. After a couple of months, we moved the feeder to the back. No takers. We bought expensive food. No takers.
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| Red-bellied woodpecker |
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| Tufted titmouse |
Until this week. I guess the birds had another meeting and decided it was okay to return to our feeder because we have seen finches, juncos, Carolina wrens, tufted titmouse, chickadees, sparrows, cardinals, and a red-bellied woodpecker.
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| Male and female cardinal |
It's all a mystery to me, especially how they all seemed to leave and return at the same time. But for whatever reason, I am glad they are back.
Until next time...Caroline wren
Note: All of the pictures are from years past. Our newly arrived birds are too skittish for me to get close enough for a picture.
You get such pretty birdy visitors! I always hear a tufted titmouse in our backyard, but I haven't actually spotted him yet. I'm still enjoying watching and feeding my feathered friends. I've been picking up so many of them on the Merlin app that it's almost like as many as I was picking up during the spring migration season! It has been pretty warm here, so maybe that's why.
ReplyDeleteI haven't used the Merlin app for a while because I'm not spending much time outside in the cold. Maybe, I'll put my phone outside and then retrieve it after a few minutes. :)
DeleteEnjoy your warmer weather and and bird sounds.
I think with the weird weather the birds are finding food other places. I have noticed fewer than normal in my backyard.
ReplyDeleteWhat seemed so weird is that the same thing happened several years in a row, and we had never had it happen before. Oh, well. I will never pretend to understand what nature is doing.
DeleteSo glad your birds are back!They are so pretty.
ReplyDeleteWe have some stray cats around, and I think they are scaring away the birds.
That's so odd that the birds just stopped coming like that. I'm glad they're coming back. It's so much fun to watch them at the feeders. Did the squirrel(s) still come during the bird boycott?
ReplyDeleteWe always seem to have lots of birds (maybe that's because we're a lot further south than you are?), but I have noticed that some feeders are definitely more popular with the birds and the squirrels. There are some I could probably refill multiple times a day and others I only have to refill about every ten days or so. I put the same food in all of them, so it must be the feeders and/or locations that make the difference.
I'm glad the birds are back and enjoying the birdseed you've put out for them. I wonder what kept them away, earlier? The picture of the squirrel inside the bird feeder is funny!
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