Showing posts with label suet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suet. Show all posts

6/26/2018

juvenile birds


The wild wild woods and the feeder garden are full of fledgelings and juvenile birds.  Some are learning to get suet from the hanging dispensers.  This Downy Woodpecker has been at the suet three days in a row.  If it is with the same young bird, I suspect she is pretending to be a slow learner so the adult continues to serve it up.

5/16/2018

suet for Spring birds

Brown Thrasher
Baltimore Oriole, male





















Every bird loves suet at this time of the year.  Their efforts -- whether to migrate, find a mate, define territory, or build a nest -- all take energy.  Suet provides it when the insects are not quite plentiful enough this early in our "late" Spring.




10/24/2016

bird feeder garden


The veggie garden has been transitioned to a feeder garden for birds and pollinators.  This year --  among the tomatoes, beans, peas, and squash -- I planted more native flowering plants.  We watched as the nesting birds nearby brought their juveniles to the feeders and taught them how to feed themselves rather than gaping and begging.  Now, with seed feeders and suet cages loaded, we'll start FeederWatch in a few weeks; we'll enjoy watching the birds that gather here and report our counts for ornithology research.

2/05/2016

winter starlings


These two European Starlings have been coming to the suet feeders for a week or so.  Their Latin name Sturnus vulgaris is fitting, since these non-natives are considered a vulgar nuisance when they mob lawns in big, noisy flocks.  They appear black, but up close their feathers are dazzling iridescent blue, purple, gold, and green. Fortunately, just these two so far near the wild wild woods . . .

Studies of Starlings' mob movements have found that starling flocks model a complex physical phenomenon, seldom observed in physical and biological systems, known as scale-free correlation. Read more at starling murmurations




12/23/2015

suet breakfast



Today the male yellow-shafted Northern Flicker Colaptes auratus visited the suet block for breakfast.  It was a wet foggy winter morning; maybe he could not find enough ants, his favorite food, so suet would suffice for energy. 

Flickers often search for ants underground, hammering at the soil the way other woodpeckers drill into wood.

12/01/2015

bird feeder garden


The veggie plot converts to a bird feeder garden in winter.  The edible crops have been harvested.  The perennials reach down to overwinter, and the herbs offer up their stems and seed heads for the birds. The feeders beckon the birds; we deter the squirrels from the bird food with a toy "slinky" hung on each slippery pole. 

12/01/2014

fat food

The Pileated Woodpeckers come out of the wild wild woods occasionally to take suet at the feeder station.  Especially on a cold winter day, the extra fat is good warming nutrition for them.


11/14/2014

busy feeder station

The bird feeder station at the edge of the woods is a busy place on a wintery morning.



5/16/2014

more migrants



Another wave of migrants stopped here for refueling:
Tennessee Warbler, Yellow Warbler
and Indigo Bunting.
 
  
They gorged on suet at the bird feeders, hunted insects
in the grass, and picked bugs hiding among tree
buds and blossoms.



12/06/2013

suet choices


We have several types of suet feeders to accommodate different sizes of birds.  The male (red moustache) of our Pileated Dryocopus pileatus Woodpecker pair hangs onto the cage for big birds but leans over to taste the suet flavor in the offering next door.