Wild Bird Wednesday – Feeding Frenzy

It is a busy time of year for all the birds around our yard. Many of our feathered friends have babies that they are feeding and the parents are working hard to keep up with those voracious appetites. In addition to the fruit on many of the shrubs we have planted in our yard we offer two feeding stations.

Tufted Titmouse at mealworm feeder

Our mealworm feeder is always a popular stop for all our birds but our other feeding station is just as busy.

Tufted Titmouse at suet feeder

Tufted Titmouse grabs a beak full of suet

What you can’t see in these pictures of the tufted titmouse are the young ones that are screeching from the bushes behind the feeder. This titmouse made numerous trips to try to quiet her brood.

Blue Jay on suet feeder

One of the biggest users of the suet feeder are the blue jays. They are a bit sloppy too.

Blue Jay grabbing some suet

Blue Jay flies away after taking some suet
(notice how much is falling to the ground – you may have to click on the image to see)

The blue jays are some of the messiest eaters. There is quite a large area of crumbs under this feeder. A few birds are smart enough to feed on that too.

White-breasted Nuthatch picks some suet from the cake

We use C & S Hot Pepper Delight in our suet feeder. This works the best for us as it is a no melt variety and the hot pepper keeps the squirrels and chipmunks away. We’ve tried other brands of hot pepper but found the rodents weren’t deterred by them. In case you are wondering birds will happily eat the hot suet because they don’t have well-developed taste buds.

C & S Hot Pepper Delight

Don’t forget you can click on the images to see a larger version.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the birds we see around our yard. I’m joining the Wild Bird Wednesday blog hop. You should stop by and see some more birds.

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Wild Bird Wednesday – Hand Feeding at Mendon Ponds Park

This week I am continuing my posts on birds in our area and joining Wild Bird Wednesday. This week the series of pictures is a little blast from the past, however you could easily replay this scene today if you wanted to try. Mendon Ponds Park is a treasure where you can find lots of wildlife. It is also where Charlie took the picture of the Bridge at Quaker Pond. There are miles of hiking trails as well and you can go from open field to wooded habitat to open water in minutes.

One of the fun things about the park is that because of regular nature hikes hosted Wild Wings, a not-for-profit educational organization that houses and cares for permanently injured birds of prey housed in the park, the black-capped chickadees in the park are accustomed to being fed by the human visitors. For this reason we usually keep some sunflower seeds with us whenever we visit this park.

On this particular visit we had forgotten the seed in the car and when we were almost back to the car a pair of chickadees began harassing us like a couple of pan handlers for some seed. I quickly ran to the car and retrieved the sunflower seeds so we wouldn’t have any bloodshed on our hands.  😉

It didn’t take long for the chickadees to start visiting Charlies hand. At first they were flying off to eat each seed after their visit but eventually they started stashing them in the bark of nearby trees.

While this was taking place a female white breasted nuthatch watched closely from the tree directly behind Charlie.

She seemed to be getting her courage up and even hung upside down from a small branch…

…before finally taking the plunge.

She was cautious but eventually made her selection.

Once she made that first step she continued to return for more seed.

A great finish to a wonderful day. We never thought we would be able to hand feed a nuthatch!  Charlie and I haven’t been back to the park for a while, but we hope to bring Millie to it to enjoy the sights, sounds, wildlife and hiking trails with us soon. We are just waiting for some drier weather.

I hope you have enjoyed this edition of Wild Bird Wednesday and will take some time to stop by the blog hop host too. And yes I posted this a little earlier than Wednesday in my time-zone, but that is because the blog hop is hosted in Australia.

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