11:40 AM – It’s been a busy day for birds, what with the Cowbird and Blackbird invasion. Here’s the Redwing Blackbird with some Cowbirds in the platform feeder.

Another Redwing tries some meal worms. These birds are much bigger than our usual customers.

9:10 AM – There are a number of Redwing Blackbirds flocking with the Cowbirds. They usually go to the tube feeders, the Squirrel Busters, or on the ground, not the platform feeder. Here’s the Cowbirds feeding, when a Redwing joins them for a few moments.

8:45 AM – From out of nowhere a flock of these birds hit the deck platform feeder. I think they’re Brown Headed Cowbirds. I’ve never seen one around here before. They moved in a took over for about a minute, then flew off together. They remind me of a flash mob looting a convenience store.

8:35 AM – Here’s the first sighting of a Bluebird at the worm feeder:

4:05 AM – We learned one thing for sure last night: Mr. Raccoon really likes meal worms. See video below of him shoveling worms into his jaws with his little hands. We also learned that the pepper suet works, and in fact does repel mammals. The video shows his preliminary suet stealing routine, then he’s gone. We can verify this at first light by looking at the pepper suet for gnawing.

Finally, we don’t have good clear video of the deck suet feeder, but I can see commotion in the background of the worm feeder video. I assume that was him getting into the suet, but we’ll look for raccoon gnaw marks to confirm.

All this means we’ll have to rearrange the feeders – probably the Squirrel Buster will replace the deck suet feeder, which will go, where? We may not be able to protect it, so we’ll hang it in a tree a good distance from the deck and call it a Raccoon Feeder.

Here’s ‘Rocky’ and the worms:

And ‘Rocky’ with the pepper suet: