5:57 AM – We moved some feeders around, placing one of the Squirrel Busters on a tree. Although the Busters are very effective, when they’re close to a tree trunk they’re more accessible to critters, like this midnight raccoon. In the first part he’s able to get some seed, then he trips the shut-down lever and becomes discouraged. For now, anyway. We’ll have to put hot pepper seed in these feeders, eventually.
Dove against dove at the platform feeder. One of these looks smaller and younger than the other, so it’s probably a case of teaching a young Mourning Dove his place.
4:32 AM – Our camera caught this mother Cardinal and young one early in the morning, before light. We’ve seen the adults feed each other, but this is the first time a Card brought a youngster to the feeder for a meal. Notice how at the end of the video the chick tries to feed itself.
The Mourning Doves continue to dominate the platform feeder. The little House Finch in the following clip is showing a lot of spirit, but he’s fighting out of his class.
12:50 AM – It seems like all we see at the platform feeder these days are Doves, Cardinals and Blue Jays. We used to have a wider selection of birds – maybe we’ll see that again in Fall. In the meantime, here’s a rare (for now) appearance of a female House Finch. Of course she gets run off by a scruffy looking Cardinal.
Back to the Blue Jays – here’s a typical session on the platform: Cracking open a seed, and sharing the feeder with a Blue Jay friend. That’s a dove that shows up half way through. The Jays are getting used to them, as you’ll see.
3:45 AM – The Cardinals have had a bad time of it lately, what with the molting. Some of them are so pathetic looking that I stopped posting videos of them. Even though I’ve been reassured by more experienced back yard bird enthusiasts that this happens every summer, it’s been disturbing. This Cardinal, however, does seem to have a new batch of head feathers, ones that look bright and new, when compared with those on his body. This may be the same one that was featured a while back. They look new to me, anyway, and I’m inclined to be optimistic about this.
The friction between the Mourning Doves and Blue Jays continues. The larger, heavier Doves almost always prevail in these skirmishes.
1:15 AM – Downy Woodpecker going after the suet cylinder with lots of determination and energy.
Carolina Wren discovers that there the mealworm feeder is completely empty, but returns several times for a thorough search, just to be sure. He finally got hungry enough to stop by the suet feeder for dinner, but we recorded several vain attempts to find mealworms throughout the afternoon. These birds really like mealworms, even the dried (as opposed to live) ones.
We’ve had lots of posts about molting, particularly with the Cardinals. They seem to have particularly dramatic time of it, what with the naked black head and general patchy, scruffy look. It seems as if they’ve been molting for a long time. Lately we’ve seen Cardinals that looks so severely afflicted that we’re becoming concerned that it might be some disease, and not the natural process of feather replacement. We did some research, and compared images from the Cornell website and others, and have been reassured. No matter how scrofulous the red birds look, it’s almost certainly normal plumage replacement.
We were going to present videos of pathetic looking Cardinals, but decided to spare everyone. Except for this video, of a sad Card sharing with doves. The doves look kind of sorry for him.
1:12 AM – We had a minor invasion of Common Grackles Sunday, our first. They are distinguished from Crows by their yellow eye (on adults) and iridescent feathers with highlights of green, blue, brown (and probably more) in the black. The slightly smaller, brownish birds mixed in with them are immature Grackles. There were a lot of them all over the yard, on all of the feeders and water supplies, on the ground. It’s hard to estimate, but I’d say more than a few dozen and less that a hundred. Needless to say, there were none of the regulars feeding at the same time.
The Grackles were big, noisy, quarrelsome birds. Notice the Mourning Dove at the end of the clip, scooting onto the feeder was soon as the Grackles left.
These are attractive birds, with the shiny feathers. The big yellow eye is disturbing, though.
They got to all of the feeders, including the suet cage. They really tore piece out of the suet cylinder. I have no doubt they would have demolished it if they hadn’t been scared off.
After they’d been here about 15 minutes I went out and ran them off. Unless we want an “all Grackle – all the time” foodcourt, we have to move them on to some other lucky back yard. They came back about ten minutes later. I ran them off again, and five minute later they were back again. This time I sat on the deck with a camera for about twenty minutes. They flew through the yard a few times, and finally disappeared. Visits from Grackles are very much a “Glad you’re here, when are you leaving” kind of experience.
4:49 AM – This platform feeder drama went on for almost six minutes. Two doves versus one Blue Jay, for control of the bird seed. At one point they tried sharing, each pecking up some seed. One dove flew off, and the other moved in to take his place. Eventual he went for the Blue Jay. The Jay, however, didn’t fly away. He just retreated a few feet along the rail and kept on staring. Then he advance to the water and the Dove broke, and flew off. It was interesting , but I doubt anything was permanently settled.
The new suet we’re using is very popular with the customers, drawing birds that don’t ordinarily feed at the suet cage. I like these two videos (combined) because the show the difference between the biggest and smallest suet fans, a Red-bellied Woodpecker and a Carolina Chickadee.
At first I thought this might be the first Blue Jay visitor to the suet cage. but it turns out there were two other visits filmed. Still a rare event though. This one looks like an immature one.
3:52 AM – The Mourning Doves are now the most frequent visitor to the open platform feeders, and it looks like they’re feeling possessive. This one sure doesn’t want Blue Jays hanging around.
Since the cylinder suet cage is back in action, we’ve been getting a steady stream of bird customers (and a couple of attempts by squirrels). These were there over the last few days: Downy Woodpecker,White Breasted Nuthatch, Bluebird, Cardinal, Carolina Chickadee and Red-bellied Woodpecker. The Cardinal is new to the suet feeder, probably because the mealworm feeder wasn’t up that day. Same for the bluebird with the attractive pattern of back feathers.
Here’s that squirrel we mentioned. He takes a good sniff and decided to have lunch somewhere else. We really like pepper suet.
4:03 PM – There was a lot of action and the newly restored platform feeder and bird bath on the deck. First, we see a Mourning Dove wallowing in the bath. The water got so dirty from all the bathing I had to change it early in the day. That’s a robin trying to run him off.
Here’s that robin with a really roughed-up looking Cardinal. That Cardinal is kind of a mystery. He was around earlier in the day, but didn’t look so bedraggled. Maybe he had a bout of accelerated molting. Maybe he got mobbed by a flock of delinquent bluebirds. He seems to fly away all right.
Finally, the robin by himself aggressively bathing and grooming himself.