Normally, this is a beautiful sight to me. Full bird feeders mean lots of opportunities for me to watch birds in the coming days. However, this is how my feeders have looked for the last 2 1/2 months. Full. Not one visitor. Very sad.Oh, we have birds. I am listening to the crows swarming outside as I type. It is like fingernails on a chalkboard. They gather and swarm in the trees next to our building like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's, The Birds. Seriously. Hundreds of them.
We also have many Western Scrub Jays...
Yep, they're beautiful. I wanna like them. I have tried to like them. But they have a screech that is almost as maddening as the crows kaw. This songbird lover is very sad. I haven't heard the "chicka dee dee dee" of the chickadee or the joyous "cheer, cheer, cheer, what, what, what" of my beloved Cardinal. There are no Cardinals here. Very sad indeed.
Isn't he stunning?!!So, my bird feeders will continue to sit and this birdlover will have to go find her birds somewhere else.
2 comments:
I'm sad for you! Hang in there. Maybe birds will come in the spring? And although they aren't coming now, maybe if they do start to come they will keep coming.
Okay, so here is my thoughts after reading your post. As a fellow Northern CA gal I have some ideas to offer. You need to put some shelter up around your feeders or the little birds don't have a chance with the jays and crows. It makes all the difference in the world. Can you put out a big pot with some sort of bush that will sit under the feeder so the little birds can fly in, perch, and then fly up and eat from the feeders?
How about a window feeder or a hummingbird feeder up closer to the window? Can you plant or put a pot under your window so they can have some shelter to fly into to escape the jays?
If you only have big birds....how about a suet feeder for woodpeckers? I never thought we had woodpeckers until I just on a whim bought one of those cage feeders with the suet slab and hung it up outside the window. Within a few days, we had nuthatches and woodpeckers.
Our finches come and go and right now they are pretty scarce. They are thick in the summertime so give your finch feeder a chance.
We have some ground feeders right now. Quail and towhees and juncos and white crowned sparrows are outside among the leaves right now scratching around under the feeders. Can you pile some leaves up under the feeder and then sprinkle some seed down for the ground feeders?
Have you tried different seed? You probably don't have many song birds in Davis but I would imagine a lot of house finches, house sparrows, white crowned sparrows, and maybe some yellow finches. They don't all like the song bird mix and I just buy the regular old stuff that has quite a bit of millet in it and a few sunflower seeds...it makes a mess but the ground feeders clean it up.
If all else fails, make friends with scrub jays. We put out peanuts and watch them collect them and fly with their mouths full. We put the peanuts in funny places just to see what they will do to get them. Once we placed a few on top of the basketball on the table and it was hilarious to watch the jay try to figure out how to snatch the peanut.
Sorry this got so long but I know the joy there is in watching birds in the feeder. I do it every day and would be sad if we no longer had any birds.
Hope this helps. Email me if you want more ideas.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
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