4:35 PM – A flock of Goldfinches moved into the neighborhood recently. The cold winter up north drove them further south than they usually come, according to the lady at Wild Birds Unlimited. In this video they are swarming a finch thistle sock. They are all Goldfinches, I think. The Cornell bird website shows non-producing males/females with very little yellow color. I estimate there’s about 10 – 12 in this flock, but that could be wildly inaccurate. The video is about three minutes long, and nothing much happens except Goldfinches feeding at the thistle sock, and occasionally squabbling about territory.

7:50 AM – Our first customers at the worm feeder (captured by the Worm Cam) are two Titmice.

4:20 AM – We made a trip to the Wild Birds Unlimited yesterday morning, and indulged ourselves. We bought two new feeders – one for big round blocks of suet, and one for meal worms (not the live ones). The latter is supposed to attract Bluebirds. We also bought a Bluebird house, a slanted arm to attach to the deck for one of the new feeders, and some squares of replacement suet. One of them is Pepper flavored. The Birds Unlimited expert tells us birds can’t taste the hot pepper flavor, but mammals – meaning raccoons – can. The theory is ‘Rocky’ will taste it, and never return. To that feeder, anyway.

Yesterday afternoon we set up the feeders, and rearranged the cameras. We’ll put up the Bluebird house tomorrow, probably. The new arrangement isn’t permanent yet, we’ll see how it works.

Of course ‘Rocky’ Raccoon visited, twice last night. The second time he was on the deck rail while we were right inside. The video below shows him reaching for the deck suet feeder, looking at the house, listening, then deciding to leave. On the first visit, he got into the new suet feeder on the deck, the platform feeder and the original suet feeder in the tree. He didn’t knock that one down this time, but did detach the camera from it’s mount and leave it on the ground.

These videos aren’t very good, but I’ll edit them down and post them to illustrate and document ‘Rocky’s’ bad behavior.

Here’s ‘Rocky’ listening to us inside the house:

Here he’s into the tree suet feeder: