Christmas before last, my wife received a bird feeder for our deck. Things were going pretty well with the Wagner’s Eastern Regional Blend, except for the squirrels.
Initially, we defeated them by swinging the boom holding the feeder out over open space off the deck, but a few months back they figured out how to defeat that, and basically whenever we weren’t looking, they emptied the thing. I don’t know what it was they were so crazy about; maybe the sunflower seeds.
So a month or so ago I bought some seed at Lowe’s that would only attract smaller birds — and cardinals.
So what’s happened? The cardinals tend to hog it, and run the sparrows and wrens off.
And some of them have gotten pretty fat.
Get a load of this guy. Yeah, his feathers are kind of fluffed out, but he’s still rather large.
And he’s not even eating. He’s just sitting there, staking out territory. Very political, very wordly for a bird of the cloth.
I think I’ll call him “Wolsey”…
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It is the sunflower seeds that the squirrels like. I feed safflower seed only. Maybe that’s what you’ve got. Squirrels don’t like it but a very good mix of birds do. We get cardinals, titmice, chickadees, wrens, house finches, and doves mostly. The Cardinals don’t run them off so much, but I also have multiple feeders so maybe that helps. The doves are hogs, though. If you put out suet, the mockingbirds are downright rude. I’m rambling. I’m a bird nerd.
They may be rude, but hear me when I say this, Scout: It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird…
🙂
I hope you heard that in a deep Gregory Peck voice…
Oh dang, I totally walked into that one. 🙂 But yea, it’s true. I agree.
Nice.
We had to switch to safflower seed as well. Haven’t had any squirrel problems since. Also, the hawks and the owls in the neighborhood have helped!
What have you done to Cardinal Woolsey to make him turn so pale?!
Yeah, the colors aren’t true, but it was very sunny, and I was shooting through a window with a phone. All that kind of washed him out.
This is Wolsey near the end, when King Henry has nearly hounded him to death…
Anyway, I don’t think his colors were the best-looking to begin with. This was a pretty disheveled-looking bird…
Females are duller in appearance, which is common among birds because the female has to be hidden from predators while nesting. But then the male feeds the female during courtship, so if this is a female, she probably wouldn’t be at the feeder in the first place. I think you may need to institute an HB2-style bill at your feeder. (There’s a pun lurking in that sentence, but I can’t quite make it…)
I was ASSUMING Cardinal Wolsey was a male, just one who has seen better days. Dull as his coloring is, it seems much redder than any female. (And if he’s NOT, Henry and Anne Boleyn REALLY have something to use against him.)
We DO get females at the feeder — or at least around the feeder. I’ll see couples out there. I certainly hope they are mating pairs. I’d hate to see a male cardinal dine out with a female who wasn’t his mate…
You’re very topical today… 😉
I think that may be an immature male. He doesn’t have the dark around his face yet or the red beak. He is probably duller because he is transitioning from the duller juvenile color but starting to get some of his bright red feathers.
We’ve tried several feeder designs to keep the squirrels out. The most entertaining method we found was using a shepherd’s crook to hang the feeder, and then wiping the crook’s staff with vegetable oil. There’s something satisfying about watching such a nimble nemesis scrabbling for a foothold. Our current feeder is spring-loaded. If anything heavier than a bird perches on it, the feeder openings close off, preventing access to the seed. But even that didn’t deter a raccoon we had a couple years ago which simply sat in a nearby hanging planter and pulled the feeder to him and scooped the seed out. We finally changed the seed mix, and that’s solved it, but we don’t get as nice a variety of birds now.
Looks more like a Richelieu to me.
I considered that, but I know less about him. Just a character in “The Three Musketeers” to me…
*Very* political and worldly. Perhaps not as rotund as Wolsey, however.