Feeding the Wildlife You See: ysabetwordsmith

Feeding the Wildlife You See

I usually don't feed the birds much in summer, but this year I'm experimenting. For the last week I've been seeing goldfinches and indigo buntings all over the patio. So, I bought them a thistle sock and hung it near the hopper feeder, in the woodland garden where the honeysuckle bush and sapling trees stand outside the kitchen window. I also put a brick chip in the abandoned dog dish and started keeping that full of water. It's not the kind of water feature that bird are "supposed to" like, but it's where they're going. I can work with that. When I got up this morning, these were the results ...

Grackle: "Is a box! With food ins!"
Goldfinch: "Is a sock! With food ins!"
Hummingbird: "Is a bush! With food ins!"

Indigo Bunting: "Is a box! With food ins!"
Sparrow: "My box!" *peck*
Indigo Bunting: *flies away*
Sparrow: "Is a box! With food ins!"
Me: "Hey, Indigo Bunting, you're a clinging bird. You can have sock food. That's why I bought it."
Indigo Bunting: *flies back to hopper feeder* "My box too!" *PECK* *flutter*
Sparrow: *flies away*
Indigo Bunting: "Can takes care of self. Maybe tries sock food later tho."

If I remember, I may dig out my hummingbird feeder and fill that.

ankewehner

May 13 2011, 17:04:05 UTC 10 years ago

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Birds are so delightfully silly. <3

Yes...

ysabetwordsmith

May 13 2011, 17:10:15 UTC 10 years ago

They really are. I love watching them. Yesterday's fun included a thrush preening himself. We got to see feather positions that normally don't show.

Re: Yes...

May 13 2011, 19:03:04 UTC 10 years ago

Having neither a view of the garden nor a balcony is one of the drawbacks of this house.

On the up side, we have a garage that used to be a cowshed and currently houses two breeding pairs of barn swallows. Will be fun to watch when the little ones start zipping around.

rhodielady_47

May 13 2011, 19:16:47 UTC 10 years ago

Back when I was growing up somebody tossed a some sort of a plastic panel out in our yard. As these things go, it was brought up to the kitchen door and left in the grass while somebody finished the lawn mowing; where it was promptly forgotten for a week. During that time we had a heavy rain that filled this baking dish-shaped panel up. We looked out there one morning and the birds were drinking from it and bathing. We then moved it to just in front of the window by the dining table and for the next ten years we enjoyed watching the birds come to it to drink and bathe.
Early one morning we saw quail come to it and another morning we saw a hawk. We had a resident wood thrush that dearly loved bathing in it every half hour during the hottest part of the summer. We used to wonder how he managed to fly he was such a soggy bird. Our mocking birds held their courtships near the panel too.
I don't know why birds seemed to prefer that panel on the ground but they did.
:]