3:47 AM – Our wireless router failed, which means no transmissions from the bird-cams. We still have a few ready to go, however.
Blue Jay drinking, and calling.
The squirrel looks like he’s savoring his cylinder seed lunch, munching with his eyes closed. But I’m afraid there’s something wrong with him, since it’s only one eye. We really hate to see these animals get injured, if that’s what this is. Maybe not, though.
Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal, both looking a little scruffy from molting, dining out at the mealworm feeder.
1:18 AM – It’s been raining for five days now. This cardinal has certainly gotten used to it.
We replenished the suet cage yesterday, and threw the leftovers into the platform feeder. It turns out the Blue Jays really like suet, even though they never come to the suet cage. Evidently they don’t like to hang from the vertical surface. Notice that he’s carrying off pieces of suet for some other Jay.
1:03 AM – Lately we’re sticking to the ‘pepper’ seed to discourage squirrels, but most of the regulars really like the black oil sunflower seeds and other delicacies. D has been adding peanuts to the plain pepper seed mix, to make things more interesting to the Cardinals and Blue Jays. Here’s one of the latter picking up one nut after another, evidently tasting each until he finds the one he likes.
I don’t know if it’s the time of year, but the Tufted Titmice (one of them, at least) appear much darker in color than usual. So much so that at first I though they were a new kind of bird at the feeders. But no, a closer look confirms: they’re Titmice.
White Breasted Huthatch, acrobatic as always, at the suet feeder.
6:11 AM – There’s a new Blue Jay around, a little smaller than the others. Presumably it’s a young bird, one of the recent crop of chicks of all the bird variety. In this clip, he learns who’s in charge of the feeders (for now, anyway). Notice in the last part of the video that he’s in the background, sitting on the rail waiting his turn.
The small brown birds are either female or juvenile House Finches. Lots of them around the last few days. The female Cardinal seems pretty relaxed about the little finch sharing the feeder. That’s not always the case.
The pepper seed keeps the squirrels from hogging the feeder. However, we added some black oil sunflower seeds to the mix, for the Cardinals and Blue Jays, and of course, the squirrels arrived to take advantage. Here’s one picking through the pepper seeds to find the good stuff.
In a few of the recent videos you may have noticed that the water bowl/bird bath is empty. There’s a crack in it (caused by a raccoon visit some time ago). We repaired it with tape, but it’s finally deteriorated to the point it won’t hold water. Fortunately, there’s a much larger bowl on the other side of the deck, so no bird goes thirsty. We’ve ordered a replacement for the camera bowl.
3:53 AM – We were concerned that we might lose the Cardinals and Blue Jays when we retired the open feeders – that’s their favorite venue. So we bought some ‘squirrel repellent’ seed for the platform feeder. It seems to work pretty well. Here are a Cardinal, Blue Jay, Mourning Dove, House Finch (female) and Titmouse sampling the new menu.
And here’s a customers that isn’t so happy. The pepper repellent doesn’t always work – we had some pepper powder we sprinkled on the black oil sunflower seeds that the squirrels seemed to find delicious – but these seeds are doing their job.
6:50 AM – This one is just for the color on the Blue Jay’s back.
After we took the open platform feeder out of service we had some disappointed and confused birds. The doves, Cardinals and Blue Jays don’t care for the ‘perch’ style feeders. Lucky for them we have two more platforms elsewhere in the yard.
This is a lengthy video of the raccoon discovering that he could reach the Squirrel Buster feeder from the rail. He makes the most of it. He was there for over an hour, and it looks like he ate until he couldn’t eat any more.
4:13 AM – We put the suet feeder back in front of the camera. The finch sock that was there got no traffic, and the Squirrel Buster was easy prey for squirrels and raccoons. We loaded the suet cage with “pepper” suet, to discourage the pests. The usual suet fans showed up right away. The first one – a Red-bellied Woodpecker – looks like it’s been injured, but I think it’s just molting. No way to really tell what’s going on. The other birds are the Downy Woodpecker, the White Breasted Nuthatch and Carolina Chickadee.
The juvenile bluebirds continue to get more color – the blue on this one is coming in.
3:02 AM – The Eastern Towhee was back for a second day. This is a much better video.
A few days ago we had a video of birds taking food away from the feeders. We’re seeing a lot of it – not just the birds on this video and the previous one. It will be interesting to see if we have new crops of young birds in a couple of months. Hope so.
The sparrows tend to be extras in the great bird dramas of the Foodcourt, even the relatively colorful ones like this Chipping Sparrow. Here he’s looking for intact seed after one of the squirrels has ravaged the platform feeder.
1:27 AM – We moved the mealworm feeder (and MealwormCam) to get videos with less glare. It seems to be working. Here’s one of a kind of rare event: a Carolina Chickadee feeding at the same time as a bluebird. Now that the bluebirds are older, they seem to be less aggressive.
More mealworm feeder patrons – a Carolina Wren and Tufted Titmouse:
We really like these Blue Jays. Never get tired of how colorful they are.
4:55 AM – The Red-bellied Woodpecker doesn’t usually feed at the platform feeder, but we’ve been seeing him everywhere this last month. He’s been at the mealworm feeder, the Squirrel Buster, the suet feeder, the platform feeder and even on trees, going right to the source for some live insects. What a bird.
From yesterdays videos, these two win the prize for vivid color:
Carolina Chickadees, fast and furious session on the mealworm feeder. You’d think the food was going to disappear any second.