We get weeks of entertainment for what we’d spend on a couple of movie tickets and popcorn.
We buy a bag of bird seed, fill the feeder, and sit back and watch the action.
Our bird feeder hangs from a limb of a white oak tree just outside our dining room window; since we are on a steep hillside, that means the feeder is 25 feet or so above the ground. It is attached to a line which runs through a pulley so I can lower the feeder to refill it.
I’ve had to fill the feeder a couple of times a day lately as we have witnessed what could be described as avian food riots. I’m almost afraid not to refill it when so many of them seem to stare in the window impatiently waiting.
Goldfinches predominate at this time of year. They are not yet the canary yellow that will identify them later on Instead the are a sort of yellowish green.
They teem in the trees, contesting for perching places on the feeder. Squadrons of them drop to the ground like rocks, gleaning seeds that have been spilled.
A red-bellied woodpecker steams into the feeder like a battleship among destroyers, scattering the smaller birds, which return as soon as the larger bird departs. His smaller cousin, the hairy woodpecker, doesn’t cause that kind of alarm.
Other birds come to the feeder, too: chickadees and house finches and titmice and nuthatches, those funny little birds that walk down a tree trunk facing down, and the occasional sparrow. Brilliant male cardinals and less flamboyant females sit on the branches looking longingly at the feeder and make an occasional pass at it, but they are too large to feed easily.
Squirrels play chase around the trees, leaping from one pencil-sized limb to another. They sometimes venture out on the limb above the feeder and even hang by their back legs and try to access the bountiful supply of sunflower seeds, but they find that the shutters close -- or that I will lean out of the window and yell at them -- so they mostly scurry around the ground under the feeder, claiming spilt seeds. They are joined by the doves, also too large for the feeder.
A trio of mallards occasional waddles along the ground under the feeder, even the odd crow shows up briefly.
From early morning until later afternoon the area around the feeder is as frenetic
as at an anthill that has just been kicked.
When the gold finches depart, traffic at the bird feeder will drop.
But we’ll soon be putting out the hummingbird feeders and it will be warm enough to sit on the front deck and watch their aerial antics.
Meanwhile, we sit comfortably behind our double glazed, lingering over lunch and marveling at the show outside.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
