Tag Archives: Cardinals

Monday – 5.15.2017

5:02 AM – Yesterday was an ordinary day at the Foodcourt. Here’s a few birds at the suet feeder, including that Mockingbird we were looking for yesterday. He’s followed by the Red-bellied Woodpecker and an acrobatic White Breasted Nuthatch.

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Ordinary day with Cardinals at the platform feeder. A sluggish looking Mourning Dove shares the feeder with Mr. Cardinal for a bit.

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Finally, an ordinary night with a cat prowling around.

Sunday – 5.7.2017

2:09 AM – What have the squirrels been up to? Let’s see – drinking, eating, avoiding a confrontation with another squirrel, then visiting the hummingbird feeder for desert.

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Sometimes our customers don’t get what they’re looking for. Here a Blue Jay arrives to early for food service, then a White Breasted Nuthatch can’t find what he’s looking for, and finally a surprise late-night visitor is disappointed.

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I guess Cardinals like mealworms too, though for some reason it’s only Mr. Cardinal that goes to the mealworm feeder.

Saturday – 5.6.2017

5:23 AM – This is our first sighting of the juvenile House Finch. Of course, this is our first year in business as the Backyard Foodcourt, so we’re seeing a lot for the first time. These little guys are fuzzy and awkward, bumbling around the platform feeder. We like the stripes all over them. In this video, they meet a Cardinal, briefly, and then a Mourning Dove, who breaks up their party.

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The Eastern Towhee is still around.

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What’s this? A raccoo, or a cat? Or maybe a possum? The shape of the head says it’s not a cat, and the skinny tail doesn’t look much like a raccoon tail. Might be a possum, but I haven’t seen one around here, ever. I’m sure they are there, I just haven’t seen one.

Friday – 5.5.2017

12:32 AM – We’ve seen the Eastern Towhee in the yard a few times, but never at the feeders, where we could get a video of them. This one spent all day, off and on, eating black oil sunflower seeds.

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The Red-bellied Woodpecker visited a couple of times. He’s not shy about joining other birds at the feeder. In this video we see him confront the new Towhee, then a Cardinal.

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Typical Blue Jay seed crushing. He can be noisy. We can hear him from inside the house.

Tuesday – 5.2.2017

1:02 AM – I’m not completely clear on the ‘food sharing’ between the male and female cardinals, but it’s been going on for several weeks now. And they’re still at it.

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We haven’t seen the bluebird kids around the platform feeder much the last week or so, but they’re all over the mealworm feeder. Here are three of them on it at the same time. This is a record number for any kind of bird.

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Here’s yesterday’s wet Blue Jay all dried out, and hungry.

Saturday – 4.29.2017

3:40 AM – We replaced the shabby old birdbath we were using as a feeder with a nice one, made of wood with a screen floor. The birds probably don’t care, but it does look better. Here is a parade of birds trying it out: Cardinal, White Breasted Nuthatch, Sparrow and North Carolina Chickadee.

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We don’t have clouds of hummingbirds yet, but we’re starting to see an increase in traffic.

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The Blue Jays are now at the feeder off and on, all day. I think they’re nesting in a tree across the yard by the back fence. This is interesting – one Jay flies into the other, knocking him off the feeder, then does a kind of hopping victory dance. The last part of the clip shows this in slow motion.

Tuesday – 4.25.2017

12:03 AM – Recently Mrs. Cardinal tangled with one of the delinquent bluebirds, and come out second best. Evidently she was surprised the first time. This time it goes a little differently. The action part is repeated in slow motion. All that’s followed by a brief food sharing episode with Mr. Cardinal.

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The Blue Jay seems to have become a regular, I’m pleased to say.

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We have focused on the bluebirds and Blue Jays so much lately it’s easy to forget there are a lot of other birds in the Foodcourt. Here’s a couple of those – a very handsome Yellow-rumped Warbler and a White Breasted Nuthatch – just going about their business.

Tuesday – 4.18.2017

1:53 AM – Maybe we should call this edition of the Backyard Foodcourt “Young Bluebirds Misbehaving”. But before we get to that, here’s a short video of an Indigo Bunting. This is the first of these to show up at the Foodcourt. They’re supposed to be attracted to thistle, so we spread some in the platform feeder. We’d like to see more of this beautiful little bird.

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Now the young bluebirds. We’ll start with one of the young males going after a couple of goldfinches. One of the finches is very small, and may be an immature goldfinch.

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In this one, Mrs. Cardinal seems to try to run off one of the young male bluebirds. That doesn’t work out the way she planned. Note the cardinal’s crest rising and falling as she engages the bluebird.

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To end on a more heartwarming note (sort of), here’s one of the bluebirds getting fed by Mr. Bluebird. Then a male Cardinal lands and the two start a stare-down. The film runs out, so we don’t know what happens next.