Bird feeders and prayer flags

A bright spot of color in a brown and green world.

It seems every bird watcher/feeder who lives near or in a forest must go through the battle of squirrel versus bird, and it hasn't been any different at our house. Lately, squirrels and some unidentified other furry creature were winning the battle and cleaning out all but the finch feeder overnight. Bill thinks about things a good while and then pursues his plan.  This one meant putting a ladder up against a tree, attaching a heavy, plastic-coated cable and repeating the same process on another nearby large tree. A pulley was threaded on to the cable and the filled feeder attached, then raised high up in the air.  Worked like a charm and no trees were damaged in the doing. 

Guess who suggested the prayer flags? Me, the artist, of course. A nice, bright spot in a brown and green world.  Bill, always the analytical thinker, inquired as to whether or not birds would be frightened by them. The next morning I sat by the window a long time to find out.  Two titmice could have cared less and flew straight to the tray.  Nuthatches, normally very adventurous acrobats, flew at it, under it and beyond it numerous times, landing on a tree and looking back to inspect the new arrangement. Finally, they landed on the roof of the feeder and did one of their upside down flips on to the tray.

Nearby, a flying bright spot landed on a branch to soak up the sun--a bluebird with a worm in his mouth!  I just love this splendid creature and am hopeful he will become a regular visitor even if he never uses the feeders.  To encourage his presence, we cleaned out all the bird houses and I'll start putting out some fruit for him. I read about how to raise my own mealworms for feeding the bluebirds, but decided the rather slimy, smelly and laborious process was not my thing...even for a bluebird who already has proven he is quite capable of getting his own worms!

At the front of the house, our house not the bird house, my hopes for the phoebe's return has been answered as I watch him flit around outside the kitchen window wondering what happened to the nest he and his mate left on the downspout last year.  I'm sorry, dear phoebe, but we really needed that new guttering and the new downspout is even bigger than the old one. Your sturdier perch awaits you as I await the return of the hummingbirds to provide aerial entertainment for us both from just a few feet away. 

All this just in time for the first day of Spring.

Winter scene

The misinformed calendar says winter starts Dec. 21.

About five inches of snow blankets the forest around us. Our driveway is marred only by Bill's foot prints leading to and from the mailbox at the end of a long stretch. Ice covers the snow in a crunchy layer.  "When you go to the mailbox today...," I said. "What? I thought getting the mail was your special walk-in-the-woods thing?" "Yes," I said. "Three quarters of the time. This is your quarter. I don't do slippery."  He headed downstairs to his workshop, not ready to do slippery himself.

The ice is not a bad thing for the birds.  They make slippery landings around the feeders and don't sink in, leaving no trails. Strangely, winter-coated gold finches have come back to the nyjer feeder which I almost put away in their absence. They litter the snow with seeds for the ground-feeding juncos. A downy woodpecker hangs from the suet block alongside two fat, brown wrens who never came in nice weather. One junco is missing tail feathers, making his little behind pointed and short. Yesterday I tossed seed onto the snow and today only husks remain after the flock of juncos had their fill. The tall conical evergreen has become shelter for birds during the day. At night, when we turn on the Christmas lights around it, I wonder if the birds are mad at us for waking them or grateful for a few degrees of warmth generated by the decoration.

Three squirrels run wildly around the trees and across the frozen snow like children on the first day of vacation. They show no interest in raiding the bird feeders or the easy buffet on the snow. They crash into each other in their frenzy, get upright and charge up a tall, swaying tree. Winter is a playground for the wild things today. The watching humans hunker down inside and think of things to do to pass the time.

The first snow of the season

As the weather man promised, we received about four inches of snow yesterday afternoon and into the night. With the back spotlight on, I could lie in bed and watch the flakes fall against a background of naked trees and night sky. High above the ground, the bedroom offers a somewhat treehouse view. This morning, the sun delivers the classic crisp, snowy Christmas card sort of tableaux, albeit a very windy one at the moment.

Outside our kitchen window we have a bird feeder which, in the warm months, attracts a nice assortment of avian visitors. Juncos, chickadees, gold finches, nuthatches, are regular diners. An occasional woodpecker, tufted titmouse or phoebe stops by. Now that it is 25 degrees and covered in snow, only the juncos are foraging on the ground, leaping on the feeder roof and finally making it into the protection of the feeder.  I will venture out in a while to spread more seed on the ground where they seem to dine the most and figure out where to hang a suet block to help them keep warm. Evidence on our deck indicates at least one bird spent the night under the cover over our deck furniture. Bird tracks in the snow mark their entry and exit.

Seeing these dusty gray birds this morning reminded me of an attack of envy I felt last weekend.  We did two stops on the 16Hands pottery tour in Floyd County. At the lovely home and studio of Silvie Granitelli, several feeders hung just outside the studio.  Suddenly they were covered in gold finches, tufted titmouse (titmice?) and one glorious blue bird no more than four feet away from me as I looked through the window.  I can't recall ever seeing a blue bird before and it just made my day.  Then I was envious. Why should these beautiful bluebirds be in Floyd but not in my part of Blacksburg?  Why are there still gold finches here when they have abandoned my feeders already.  What do I have to do to lure them to my forest? Some feeders are more blessed than others, it appears.

And we're moving in February why??

(Photo is view from my home office door which opens on to the front porch of my beautiful home in Queidersbach, Germany.)

It has been snowing for a week.

All the locals told us it would be a hard winter. They were right, but seems a large part of the world is experiencing the same misery. Where we are trying to move from is covered in a white blanket even as the place we are moving to is getting pounded hard for the second time this year. "We haven't had much snow in five or six years," my cousin told me when I inquired as to the winter weather in Blacksburg.

It was certainly not our plan to move in February. We wanted to be out of here before then but all the accidents and recovery times just kept pushing us later and later.

This morning I cannot see the dense ivy at my front door. The trees are coated white yet again--the last coating never left, it just got added to. The funny front yard sculpture of a dog with his nonexistent head stuck in a hole in the ground is unseen, the only hint of his location being marked with a little mound of snow over the tip of his tail. Inside the metal body is a complete ant colony I discovered when I tried to move it to a new location. What are they doing now, buried in frozen darkness? I should have removed him and my favorite terracotta yard items into the garage while I had the chance this fall.

At the side patio I have been sprinkling seed on the bricks to make it easier for all the birds to find. I will run out soon. Seven fat blackbirds are either hunkered down in the deep snow, puffed out and unmoving, or hopping around pecking to find whatever they can not covered by the fall from last night. A netted bag of suet and nuts takes a while to get their attention. It is frozen and hard to eat. I should put on my boots and fill up the feeder. Grand tits, nuthatches, chaffinches and enormous jays are regular visitors. This morning, a solitary blackbird sits motionless inside the empty feeder, wondering why the filler-upper has been shirking her duties.

Inside the house, the packer-upper is hunkered down from the weather starting her third housebound day wondering why her "feeder" is so incredibly full and trying to get it ready to empty out.