The birds and the bucks

A few days ago, Mynx asked me about the feeding of our cast of birds during the wintertime.  Well, that's a topic I will be learning along with you.  A story to tell you where we are at right now.

Wednesday night/Thursday morning, we got to bed just before three, only to watch the big ol' buck wander into the woods behind us.  Which kept Scrappy awake a while, and meant an additional few minutes got added on to the next day's self imposed sleep deprivation.  After all, I had to finish research and type Time Machine when I got up, because Friday morning I had an early appointment for a wheel alignment.  And when you add on working 3:30-midnight ( and a night that was like an inverse hurricane- long intense waves of boredom interspersed with three periods of absolutely nuts activity), it was going to catch up with me.

It did so about 11:30 AM Friday.  Me and my faithful Booogle companion went up to take a nap, but mind was not as willing as body to collapse.  Somewhere around one when I started to doze off (and Scrappy was already out)  I heard that telltale TAP-TAP-TAP that told me that a bossy woodpecker was letting me know that we were about out of bird food.  They have only EVER done this the couple of times we ran out!  So groggily I looked out the bedroom window for the offending avian spokesperson.

What I saw astounded me.  In the eight minutes that followed, I observed:

3 sparrows and two ruby-breasted nuthatches taking turns at Laurie's feeder, with additional sparrows on the fence waiting a spot.

At leats a dozen more sparrows on the ground underneath, picking up whatever dropped.

The nuthatches get into an argument and chase each other off repeatedly, usually scattering the various sparrows.

The woodpecker- who turned out to be the big "red bellied" one- flew to a tree, then to the ground- and then, just as Scrappy woke up and sat at the window to watch, lighted RIGHT IN FRONT OF SCRAPPY on the window edge (no ledge, just edge) just long enough to make him come lean against me for comfort.

With woody on the fence, sparrows everywhere, nuthatches arguing at the feeder, and Scrappy whining,"Daddy, he scared me!", a dove lands on the top of the shed, blue jays began to fly back and forth between the two trees on either side of our porch, and Mr. Squirrel came ambling up from the woods.   All at the same time.

So, while I cannot yet answer what will happen this winter, I can tell you that the dinner bell is still ringing- in fact as I type (and eat McDonalds), both woodies and the nuthatch have made appearances this morning.


And here's what life in the woods and fields look like nowadays.

As you can see, most of the leaves are now down.

Mr. Nuthatch in the woods.

Leaf raft in Stony Run.

Woody in the woods, too.

Weird, caught him taling off here.

River is way down for the year.

Thought it odd to see shelves that high up a tree- in the swamp.

Scrappy's favorite spot turns into Scrappy's favorite beach when the water's down.

Of course there were 10,000 screaming socceristas out and about, so no deer or anything bigger than a squirrel today.