Intense Cold Keeps Our Bird Feeders Busy
©Bert Gildart: We’ve had real winter this past week, meaning our bird feeders have seen more than the usual amount of attention. Several nights ago we had a low of -14ºF and the cold was accompanied by about a foot of snow. At times like this our feeders seem to be particularly active and we’ve counted dozens of different species.
Temperatures as low as -14 have kept our bird feeders busy. Image made with super-wide version of the GoPro Camera.
Typically, each day we see chickadees, finches, doves and four different species of woodpeckers, but one of the woodpeckers has become almost as regular as clockwork, and that’s our pileated. It’s a male, and we can tell by the prominent red moustache that extends about three or four inches back from the base of its lower mandible. He arrives each morning about 9. He also has an afternoon run, and that’s about an hour before the sun begins to set over the nearby Mission Mountains.
L to R: Turkeys flock to a spot beneath our feeders expecting to chow down on seed scattered by birds overhead; raven here most likely because of damaged wing; turkey tracks in our yard number in the thousands.
We’ve also had a raven at our feeder and this week marks the first time one has ever accepted food from our feeders. Certainly we see lots around our yard, just never at our feeder, and so we’ve concluded that it’s here because of a wing that seems injured.
Each day about 9 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon a male pileated graces our cage of suet.
Of course the wild turkeys make their appearance, and their numbers just seem to get bigger with the continuance of our cold snap. Turkeys congregate in our yard leaving thousands of tracks which make for interesting patterns. They congregate here because they know they might find seed at the base of our feeders, which number three. We have two cages full of suet and one feeder full of traditions seed.
How much longer we’ll see birds in such number we can’t say. The weather man tells us this cold snap is about to break so it’s going to be interesting to see what happens. I suspect we’ll continue to attract the same number of species bur probably not in the same concentrations. Sadly our raven appears to have moved on but how knows. Maybe its injury was just temporary.
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