My Feathered Friends

Within the last couple of weeks, there has been a palpaple changing of the guard.  Summer bird friends have moved out after a busy season of mating and rearing their families. The industry of bird parents is a wonder to see.  For a few weeks after the last families had been fully fledged, there was a distinctive lull in activity--the last of which was a pair of cardinal parents teaching its fledgling to eat at the meal worm feeder on its own. 

How is this act of separation accomplished?  Simply.  For the first couple of weeks, the fledgling which begs by being all a-flutter from head to toe, gets as many mealworms as it begs for.  Fledglings actually beg from any adult bird that is proximate to them.  Some of those adult birds tolerate it more than others, and I've never seen a non-parent feed a beggar!  But gradually, the parents will eat at the mealworm feeder (which is on my deck so I get an (ahem) bird's-eye view of all of this activity), and ignore (first mostly, and then totally) beggar behavior. 

An empty stomach is a powerful motivator.  It doesn't take long for the little ones to get with the program with an occassional assist from mom or dad.


But after that last bird family transitioned from fledling mom/pop to parents of adult, self-sufficient children, there were very few visitors to the meal worm feeder.  One replenishment of about 50 wiggling larvae was more than enough to last a day.

Not so now.

The winter guard has roused itself. The downey woodpecker, a year round resident, was conspicuously absent.  I guess their summer/fall bugs were plentiful.  They love suet, but I did not put much out much this summer as the squirrels raid it.  With such paucity, I did not see them or the chipping sparrows.

But now, the weather has turned, and even my beloved bluebirds are back--having abandoned the yard after a rat snake raided two nests even though they had predator baffles on them. It was heart breaking.  The suet and the mealworms are consumed with gusto.  I see my hermit thrush down from his/her summer breeding grounds.  S/he lingers by the mealworm feeder (a simple heavy glass candy bowl) and eats nearby suet that I place on slate tiles on the deck rail.

It's wonderful to see the renewed activity given a lengthy lull.  I'm waiting to see my yellow bellied sapsucker (woodpecker) and the brown creeper who also reside in our patch of of the woods over the winter.


Regrettably there are no acorns this year, so our squirrel frenemies are scrambling.  We buy cheap bags of deer corn and disperse it out back along with sunflower seeds.  It helps lessent their raiding of the feeders.  And if the sunflower feeds are dispersed, they have to scavenge a bit more v. sit and eat.  And at night, the deer who have had to hide during the day from the hunters, have been spied eating the corn as well.  They, too, will suffer from an acornless winter.