DivaMagenta@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> When I was a little girl, my grandmother in Wyoming had a pretty tame
> squirrel who lived in the tree next to her porch. He would come down
> and take a walnut from her hand.
>
> My dad even had a bluejay who was so tame he would hop into the house if
> he left the door open for him, and would fly down to eat a walnut out of
> his hand when he was outside!
Neat story, Diva. I've become an obsessive birder this year. I have
always kept the feeders filled through winter and the beginning of
spring (I figure finding a mate and building a nest is difficult enough
without having to hunt for food, too!). This May, I saw a bird out on
the feeder and didn't recognize the species--had to go get the book to
look up this little guy in a tuxedo with a red ascot. He obligingly
turned about as I was trying to compare his features with the pictures
in the book. Turned out, he was a rose-breasted grosbeak. They don't
usually come to feeders, but we in the Midwest had a late frost in
April, so the things he was accustomed to eating weren't available. I
kept watching all day, and he later showed up with his wife and another
male. They were beautiful. The next day, I was at a wild bird
specialty shop looking for different kinds of feeders and fill, and we
are year-'round feeders now.
This summer, our backyard was the place all the parent birds brought
their fledglings to eat. I didn't realize the parent birds keep feeding
the young even after they know how to fly. We saw cardinals, robins,
sparrows and starlings being fed from our feeders--well, okay, the robin
was getting worms, but they were our backyard worms! The funniest sight
was a mother starling with four babies hopping along behind her, each
squawking and flapping its wings while she hurried and chewed up peanuts
from the peanut feeder. She would feed one, and the other three would
go ballistic. I felt sorry for that poor woman. My kids asked where
the father starling was and why he wasn't helping. I bet mother
starling wondered that, too! Now, we have four immature starlings that
all come to the feeders at the same time, still have their spots--we
assume they are the four babies from that day.
Deb
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