I don’t know if it’s seasonal, or if they have finally discovered my yard full of feeders, but the house finches, goldfinches, and pine siskins are eating me out of house and home. Thirty pounds of black sunflower and ten pounds of thistle gone.
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I don’t know if it’s seasonal, or if they have finally discovered my yard full of feeders, but the house finches, goldfinches, and pine siskins are eating me out of house and home. Thirty pounds of black sunflower and ten pounds of thistle gone.
I’ll try to get some pics, but the only camera I own is part of this phone
I had to stop putting out bird feeders. Everything got to them, including squirrels, chipmunks, really big birds. They would just be hanging off those things for dear life. I was filling it constantly. Finally I just took them down. As it is, I have to feed my chickens small amounts at certain times so that they eat it all otherwise it's Grand Central Station.
That's a lot of seed and not inexpensive types either.
We can't put out feeders, draws in the skunks.
Wow, you must have a LOT of birds. Even with the squirrels coming we don't go through that much. Yes please, pictures. :)
We used to go through a lot of food for the birds and other critters that would visit. Then the raccoons started leaving "thank you" presents all over the deck and yard...we stopped.
More recently, I decided to have covered ground feeders for the squirrels (I'd taken a liking to one with a predominantly white tail and wanted to feed him/her...eye roll here, right?). Then the baby foxes discovered our yard and started hanging around. I just knew we were luring those squirrels to their deaths...we stopped.
No more.
I usually just feed once a day, I too was going through a lot of food keeping the feeders full. Now if it is really cold with frozen ground and snow then I will keep the feeders full. We have had a lot of the black birds come in for feeding these past couple of days. Last year when it was so cold for so long I actually had a flock of ducks land in the yard to clean up around the feeders for several days, but when it warmed enough for them to move on they did, this year we haven't had the snow cover that we did last.
That is a lot of seed. I've gone through 45 lbs of nyger and about 40 lbs of sunflower since early November. Am trying cracked (shelled) sunflower because there's so much litter from the in-shell kind.
Our squirrelbuster feeders close up when they try to hang on, and even close up when the bigger birds like blue jays try to perch on them. Lucy and Fitzi seem to be doing a good job of keeping the squirrels away. They have a new target - a neighbour's cat which seems to think it can saunter into our backyard.