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bird feeding frenzy

16 years ago

We have been enjoying watching the birds while they eat. We've had blue jays, chicadees, a woodpecker and once finches came. We went and bought a finch feeder and thought we might get some good pictures. They didn't even notice. All of a sudden they started to come to the platform feeder that the blue jays use. Can't win em all I guess.

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Comments (6)

lizbeth_pa
16 years ago
That is great you're getting so many birds! Like the photo, too. I can't get the birds here right at the moment and posted a msg just a few min ago about that. I o see some birds right before it snows. I also hear them but they don't come. I didn't have this problem it seems, last winter. Is this a time of year they hide pretty much or hibernate?
marricgardens
Original Author
16 years ago
I just couldn't believe we were getting so many finches at once! We usually just see them flying to the other feeder and then only 2 or 3. The past 2 days there have been flocks of them. I did't think that birds hibernate. I know that some of them go further south during the winter. There are still a few left here and more will come when the worst of the winter is over. The ones that are here love to come out when it bad weather - snowing more than windy.
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jomuir I bought this triple decker back in march at lowes not knowing if I would need to use it or if hummers would go to it. I didnt even hang this feeder till august. There is actually 3 separate feeders holding 16oz each and you can use them singly or as needed. I have a small yard as you can maybe tell by my surroundings but I do have a 10-25 hummer garden plus potted plants and a few honeysuckles. Plus maybe my central indy location helps. But when hummers do stop they cant seem to ignore the TD. As of last evening about 7pm I noticed 10 or 11 hummers sitting on the TD. The true test of knowing how many I have for that day is the period between 7-8pm. Last season at this time I was only seeing 3 or 4 hummers. Im enjoying each day that this hummer bonanza brings me. Im sure a week from now or less they will for the most part all be gone. My last sighting last season was sept 29th.
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I almost posted an observation along these lines several weeks ago. In a one-week span I noticed three separate cowbird chicks all being attended to by blue-grey gnatcatchers. There was always a single cb chick to each set of birds, and never any sign of additional BGGC chicks vying for the food. In that same time span I also noticed a CBchick being fed by a pair of indigo buntings. It's not hard to find them as they are very raucous and conspicuous. I am curious how the numbers and densities of birds most typically affected by CB predations are doing here because we have hordes of cowbirds, yet I always hear/see vireos and thrushes and others that are prime targets for parasitism. I check my nest boxes regularly and destroy any CB eggs in the hopes that at least my small wooded acreage can better sustain songbirds in a time of decline, but we live in farmland with any remaining wooded areas being highly fragmented. Flocks of winter 'blackbirds' are usually groupings of redwings, starlings, grackles and cowbirds fattened up on a steady and readily available farmland diet. I only wonder what our songbird demographics will do in the next few decades.
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jannd
16 years ago
Aren't they just wonderful to see? Thanks for sharing these photos. Lovely!
rachel_frome_ky
16 years ago
I see you're getting plenty of Goldfinches! So far, no Pine Siskins here
kendra2003
16 years ago
I'm also getting lots of Goldfinches here, but like you Rachel, no Siskins yet. If those arrive, there will be plenty of swarming.
paulsiu
16 years ago
I thought Goldfinches had left after the summer. My neighbor said he hasn't seen them even though he has a feeder. I decided to put up a nyjer seed feeder to see what would happen. Now there are about a dozen of them flying around in the yard battling with the Tree Sparrow for space on the finch sock.

On the downside, they seemed to consume about a pound of nyjer seed a day. Gold finches must eat a lot to keep warm. Good thing I purchase a big bag of nyjer seed in bulk.

Unfortunately after I install a hoop device to keep house sparrows away, they seemed to have gone after the finch feeder, so I am installing a hoop on that, too.

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