Gardening by Mistake

I don’t yet have pictures of all my bird visitors. A new kind of bird shows up every day or two, which is exciting. My most recent visitors were the Carolina wren (a fiesty little guy!), two house finches, two tufted titmice, and two beautiful Yellow-shafted Northern Flickers. I know that these birds are all considered commonplace, but I’ve never seen most of them. So, each one is very exciting to me. They aren’t common place to me, at least not yet.

I’m having a great time taking pictures of my guests. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how well most pictures turn out even though they are through the window. I’ve even been surprised to find that the birds don’t mind the flash at all. (I don’t want to use the flash as it reflects off the window and into my picture, but sometimes it fires off even when I don’t intend for it to do so).

Here are just a few of my pictures.

One of my blue jays:

A male red-bellied woodpecker:

Red-bellied woodpecker

A male house finch:

Male purple finch

And, as my husband once referred to a squirrel, the face of evil:

The "Face of Evil" headed toward the bird food

In my usual fashion, I’ve gone full-tilt on my new interest of bird feeding/watching. It all started simply enough: two trays of food and a suet cake. That was about 3 weeks ago. My small bags of bird food that I started with were about out, so I got more today. And that is when things got crazy. I left the store with a cheap tube feeder, a nyjer sock, a cool metal mesh feeder, 2 suet cages and tons of seed. Oops. Then I got home and looked around, trying to figure out where it was all going to go so that I could still watch the birds as I have been from my couch. For now, I have things hanging on different ends of my plant racks, but it’s far from ideal. So, then I had the idea of creating a bird feeding station with a central stand from which arms extend and from which I can hang my various feeders. My wonderful husband went out and got the lumber and within the next couple of days, I’ll have a new bird feeding station to try out. I hope it works. I’ll be Bird Central with all the food I’ll be able to put out on it.

The goal of all these changes is to provide the seeds and foods that will attract everything that’s already visiting plus even more without attracting the (*&^! squirrels. If the starlings visit less, too, that won’t break my heart, either. The thing I mind most about them are their voracious appetites and, more importantly, that they crowd out the other birds. To that end, I’ve got bags of nothing but pure black oil sunflower seeds and safflower seeds that will appeal to most of my birds but not to squirrels or starlings (or so I read, anyway).  I hope I don’t end up limited to using only that because I like offering the mixes with the nut meats and fruits, too.  I’ve got a mix of stuff in the mesh feeder which will at least keep the squirrels out. The only thing that will attract the squirrels at present are the trays I started with and which are still out there for now.

I almost feel bad for my dogs. They’ve had tremendous fun and excitement with the many squirrel incursions. Every time we open the door to let the dogs out, they tear out full speed, ready for a chase.  Our more laid-back dog hasn’t had exercise like this in I don’t know how long!