Birds Themselves

Birds Themselves, mixed media on canvas, 2011

Birds themselves are a joy to feed, especially at this time of year when all the youngsters line up on the deck rail to be beak-fed by their parents. Oh, the drama! We call it Bird TV. This year we've had an abundant and hungry fledge class of downy and red belly woodpeckers, finches (cardinals, gold, house, and purple), blue jays, grackles, sparrows (chipping, house, European), and starlings. No matter the type of bird, when the babies open their beaks for feeding, the red color that is revealed makes a perfect target for mama or papa to drop in suet or seed. We haven't seen chickadee, nuthatch, rose-breasted grosbeak, or tufted titmouse fledglings yet even though we think we have breeding pairs of all of these.

There is always tomorrow.

When you feed birds year-round, you earn a front-row seat at the evolution theater. For example, last year one of our blue jays, who we named Darwin, learned to feed upside down at our suet house—this is something that birds other than woodpeckers don't usually like to do. But this year's crop of jay babies all seem to have a natural inclination for and grace in upside-down feeding. Could these be Darwin's children? Have we witnessed an evolutionary stride? All speculation here, no science, but it's fun to watch and wonder.

Droll Yankee small cylinder feeder with homemade baffle and squirrel,
who is clearly not baffled, 2010

While birds themselves are a joy, excluding squirrels is a daily challenge. I made the pretzel-jug baffle in 2010 after Beau Regard, a particularly agile rodent, figured out that he could leap from the deck rail to the feeder perch (he would make it every fourth try or so), then corkscrew himself up into the jug so that his back feet could grasp the interior wire feeder hanger. His little paws could then push mounds of seed into his cheeks.

Squirrel Buster (tm) feeder with homemade rodent
shield, 2011

This year several of our squirrels discovered that by balancing their bellies on the deck rail, they could trick the weight-sensitive spring ring on our Squirrel Buster feeder and free their paws to stuff their faces. I've plugged the front-facing ports of the feeder with aluminum foil, a tin-can cover, and packing tape. The birds eat at the two ports that remain open at the back of the feeder. For now this appears to be working.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.