Cute Animals
Backyard feeder, May-June 2014
A mourning dove rests on top of the birdfeeder stand. It never eats from the feeder, but, true to its nature,
only pecks at the seeds that fall to the ground. (Zenaida macroura, family: columbidae, order: columbiformes (pigeons)
31 May 2014: An unidentified pinkish bird eats from the smaller birdfeeder (later, it was identified as a kind of male finch).
The house sparrows love the big feeder, with its big openings. Within a few hours of filling it, they can empty it.
When pressed, they will eat from the smaller feeder, but only after the big feeder is totally empty. However, this past week,
the house sparrows stopped eating from the small feeder completely. What was the problem?
It's the combination of a new birdfeed mix, and the small, vertical openings in the feeder. The house sparrows can't get
at the smaller seeds, and the higher concentration of bigger seeds won't fit through the openings.
So, after waiting to see if they would eventually start eating from the small feeder (they didn't), I emptied the mix
out of the small feeder into the big feeder. Right away, thanks to the seeds that fell on the ground, a squirrel and
two mourning doves appeared. It took much longer for the house sparrows to re-appear. An hour later, the first
house sparrow took a few pecks at the large feeder and then flew away. A bright red cardinal appeared, but only
to check out the situation. It can take several hours or days for all of the curious birds to start eating at a refilled
feeder.
4 June 2014: FDU, in the late afternoon: Goose families start to eat and poop all over a large field
near the large parking lot and the river.
The little ones were noticeably bigger today, looking more and more like fluffy Thanksgiving turkeys.
They would take a few steps, and then sit to eat (and even poop while sitting).
back to photos of the birds in the backyard, from 8 June 2014 >>