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.
1:03 AM – Here are a few video clips from the last few days.
In this one, three species of birds share the feeder and water – Mrs. Cardinal, a Purple Finch couple, and for a few seconds a tiny Carolina Chickadee.
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The Blue Jays are still around, I happy to say:
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We’re seeing the male cardinal at the mealworm feeder a lot more lately. Here’s an extreme closeup.
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Once more, the big Red-bellied Woodpecker helps himself to mealworms. His beak looks really big and strong.
10:29 AM – Bruno the neighbor dog jumped the fence again this morning. In the first section he’s in the bottom left corner – he pauses briefly to listen to, and ignore, his owner calling him. We always enjoy our visits from Bruno, and he seems to have a good time.
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9:14 AM – Bluebird fledglings are back. There are three of them, and they seem to be getting stronger, better at flying and hopping. Not always though. Here’s one trying to take off from the birdbath and getting an involuntary dunking.
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7:56 AM – Early morning Hummingbird.
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4:06 AM – The bluebirds made a brief appearance yesterday morning, but that was it. With any luck, we’ll get some good footage of them today. In the meantime, here’s a couple of standard variety Carolina Chickadees. These little hoppers are among of my favorites.
1:17 AM – A few days ago we had a video showing the Bluebird taking mealworms away from the feeder, presumably to it’s mate, or chicks. They’re not the only ones doing that. Here we see the same thing with the Carolina Wren (in this case, the Half-tailed Wren), and a Carolina Chickadee.
The Chickadee:
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We’ve never seen the Red-bellied Woodpecker at the mealworm feeder, but here he is. Compared to the usual mealworm snackbar patrons, he’s huge.
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This raccoon casually takes a shortcut across the deck. The coon-deterrent floodlight we put on the porch doesn’t faze him at all. Nor does the fact that D and the dog were just on the deck minutes before, and that we were right inside moving around. Oh well. At least he hasn’t built a den right under the deck (I think).
5:14 AM – The flock of Purple Finches continue to dominate the platform feeder. Here’s a video of a little squabbling among them.
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The Carolina Chickadee at the mealworm feeder. We also see them at the platform feeder and the suet feeder. These birds are really small – it’s hard to tell in these videos.
3:33 PM – Not sure if the squirrels have had a chance to sample the meal worms yet. This one takes a look, and decides to pass on them.
— The cat made a couple of tries, and missed. Eventually he’ll get one, I’m sorry to say, but I’m not sure what to do about it.
2:55 AM – The raccoon has returned. Here he’s washing something in the birdbath, getting a drink. I’m not sure what he’s eating, we took in the feeders last night. Maybe the suet feeder we moved off camera. We’ll find out when it’s light outside.
1:55 PM – More kinds of birds than I thought hit the suet feeder. The other day I saw a Carolina Chickadee, then yesterday another. Not as frequent a guest as the woodpeckers and nuthatches, but they put in an appearance every now and then.
4:50 AM – It was a big night for the raccoon. Here he is at the platform feeder on the deck:
Next, he climbs up the tree and gets into the suet feeder:
He figures out how to get the top off the feeder and get into the suet, but the camera only picks up glimpses of that. His next strategy is to slap the feeder around and knock pieces of suet out and onto the ground. He climbs down for a snack, the comes back up to repeat:
Now back up to shake the feeder again:
Finally, he knocks the feeder out of the tree onto the ground. I’m not sure why he ran away instead of eating the rest of the suet, maybe he thought the noise would alert us:
There was still suet left after ‘Rocky’s’ adventure. It’s possible he’d eaten his fill, after 20 minutes at the platform feeder, plus the suet he had for desert. But I think he just got spooked when the feeder fell.
As much as we enjoy watching him, we really don’t want him to visit. We were taking in the platform feeder at night, but since he stopped coming around, we let that slide. It looks like we’re going to have to resume that, plus bring in the suet as well.
10:50 AM – The usual overload of Sparrows this morning, with some Chickadees and a few Nuthatches. Here’s video of a Nuthatch in the feeder, joined by a Sparrow. A few moments later the Sparrow gets evicted by a Bluebird. Life goes on in the platform feeder.
1:25 AM – Harlan J. ‘Rocky’ Raccoon was back on the deck and surrounding areas three times last night – at least. Although we took in the deck platform feeder, we left some nuts on the rail. That must have attracted him. In the first video he leaves the deck then stops by the feeder we set up on the path (you can see his shiny eyes). There’s a lot of seeds on the ground, spillage by the birds. He didn’t stay long. In the second, we see a better shot of him, for a few seconds, foraging for more ground seed.
2:20 PM – This morning it was the usual birds – see below for video of Carolina Wren and a Robin drinking:
Later in the afternoon one of the male Cardinals came by. It looks like he was injured somehow – the dark marks close to his throat. He didn’t turn directly toward the camera, so it’s hard to tell, but clearly something is going on.