refill the bird feeders more often

A wickedly snowy day, so I came home early and put out a lot of extra birdseed and suet. They are chowing down like champs out there. Every bird for miles around. I guess they need it, not knowing how long this will last, whether they’ll be able to find food later when everything is frozen in. Plus they must need to burn an awful lot of calories to keep warm in this windy mess(especially the cardinals.)

Not really birdfeeder action, but filled birdfeeders ensure a certain amount of looking out the window, where I’m bound see cool stuff.

While looking up the common mergansers I’d seen the other day, I kept coming across photos of hooded mergansers.

Not one to be satisfied with what I’ve got, the little kid in me complained, “why don’t I ever get to see a hoodie?” Saturday, a hoodie came bobbing right by.

Sunday morning, looking out the window, I remarked ruefully on the fact that the muskrat who’d been living in the bank when I moved here had moved house. “But one will be back. It’s about time.” As if I should know anything about muskrat timing. Well I guess I could feel him coming, because by the afternoon, there was one, working on some sort of underwater construction project by the fallen log.

Finches, cardinals, sparrows, doves, starlings, woodpdeckers (downy, hairy and red-bellied), nuthatches, titmice and bluejays.
A pair of mallards and a pair of mergansers.

The mergansers were so pretty – dipping and diving in the fast-running thaw.

Edit: It’s a real ducky pair-off day. Came home and saw another mallard pair and a couple of American black ducks.

helped me pick up a 50 lb bag, and I got some suet while I was at it. So everybody should stay happy.

Last weekend we saw a hawk sitting down on the bank eating its kill. It was hard to tell at first what the kill might have been. I couldn’t hold the binoculars that steady. It couldn’t have been something small like a mouse or vole, as the hawk was taking too long to consume it. My guess was a young squirrel, until B, who’s got a steadier hand, saw a clump of grey feathers. I was worried it might have been a feeder bird, but B said the feathers were much too long to have belonged to any of the feeder birds. Eventually we figured it must have been a seagull.

At my grocery store you can still buy real, unprocessed into cakes, suet. Or take fat left over from cooking (the skin and skimmings when making chicken soup, for example), or even peanut butter. Freeze it in a small deli container, adding fillers, like bread crumbs or cranberries, if desired. The frozen fat cake fits tidily into a suet feeder.