Feeding the Birds -- and Randy

The best place in the house for Randy to take a tube feeding is at the breakfast table in our kitchen. One reason is that the feeding doesn't always go smoothly, resulting in liquids being splashed here and there. And the kitchen floor is the easiest to clean up.

Equally important, the breakfast table gives us a look out onto our side yard, where we have five bird feeders set up. And watching the birds chowing down gives us something pleasant to do for the half hour or so that a tube feeding normally takes. ("Why five feeders? Won't one suffice?" asks the non-birder. "Because birds' beaks differ considerably, enough so that different kinds of birds are attracted to different kinds of seeds, and different seeds require different kinds of feeders" says the seasoned pro.)

Anyway, the following description requires a careful look-see of the attached photo, which was taken from my seat at the breakfast table. I'll wait here while you click on the image, get a clear idea of what's there, and come back to the text. Dum de doom de dumm...

Ah! Back already? Good! Here's what's going on:

The enormous-looking thing in the upper left-hand corner is a feeder attached to the window. (Right now, it needs a cleaning and refilling.) All kinds of birds are perfectly comfortable in flying right into the feeder and chowing down while we watch them. The house finches enjoy playing "King of the Feeder" in here -- they don't bother eating, they just sit glaring out at the world and daring anyone else to try and enter the feeder. Anyone else trying to land inside the feeder results in a wonderful fuss!

The dark cylinder and cone in the lower-right corner will be recognized by birders everywhere as baffles to keep the squirrels off the feeder support pole -- which is roughly 8 feet from the house. Young squirrels are light and agile enough to beat the current arrangement of baffles and they need to be chased away with a squirt gun, but after a month or so, they put on enough weight that they can no longer jump to the feeders directly.

The two transparent hemispheres in the middle of the photo are "umbrellas" for feeders. They not only present yet one more obstacle for the truly inventive and determined squirrels, but they keep the seed remarkably dry in wet weather.

The feeder under the "umbrella" on the right is filled with sunflower seed. It is pretty much the province of house finches and a variety of brownish finches and chickadees, although the occasional goldfinch will find his/her way to this feeder. (Find his/her way from the niger seed sock feeder in the back yard. Which you can't see from the breakfast table.) Since this is the season of new finches, we have a fairly constant show of baby finches fluttering wildly to convince mom and/or dad that they are about to die of starvation if not fed immediately. The show is a put-on and doesn't work all that well, which means that the baby finches simply try harder. (Everything I need to know about human behavior, I think I can learn from watching house finches.) Anyway, the cardinals are simply too large to use the small perches on the feeder and small openings for access to the seeds. So that's why we have a larger feeder with easier access to sunflower seed just off to the right of the feeders in the photo.

The really wonderful feeder right now, though is the one under the umbrella on the left. It is filled with a variety of nuts -- a highly desirable food for almost any songbird. But the green cage around the feeder makes it impossible for starlings, doves, jays and other undesirable birds to get access to the food. So it is a safe feeding location for the little guys. The cute ones. The ones we're trying to attract in the first place!

So, as I'm sitting waiting for the Jevity liquid to drain slowly into my tummy, Deb and I are royally entertained by chickadees (I think we're getting black-capped and Carolina chickadees), titmice (or is it "titmouses"?), two kinds of woodpecker (downy and hairy), house sparrows, song sparrows, Carolina wrens, and, of course, yet more house finches. And, as mentioned above, the kids (of all species!) are the stars of the show.

And you never know what will happen next or who will show up. Kind of like sitting in your favorite tavern...