The sun and birds are back

Sunday, 1:36 pm

By Kate

Nov

04

2007

The storm is gone and you would never know that it even rained yesterday. The wind dried everything right up last night, though I think we received our full 4-5 inches of rain. Boy did it pour...all day long. I find no water damage anyplace, so that makes me very happy.

This morning the birds and squirrels were hopping mad because I’d removed all the bird feeders Friday night. One little squirrel braved the elements yesterday to come begging at the door for food. I tossed out a couple of peanuts, but they blew away. Poor squirrel. They’d all run out of patience by this morning. There were several little birds and two squirrels perched on the deck railing looking into the house and I don’t think they had smiles on their faces. They seem to know where the food comes from. Everyone is happy again with filled tummies. And I am now out of sunflower seeds. I’ll have to make a trip over to the bird store to pick up my next installment of seeds sometime in the next day or two.

And...speaking of birds...a few weeks ago I signed up for Project FeederWatch. This is a project run jointly by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada. During the season, which runs for 21 weeks (beginning the second Saturday of November), I’ll keep a pretty close eye on my feeders for two days each week, counting the greatest number of each species that arrives to eat during the two day period. Then I enter the data on their website under my project number. The data is used by the program to help track distribution trends in birds. Participants are also encouraged to report and/or photograph any illness or other anomalies. It sounded like an interesting and fun program. Signing up costs $15 and anyone can participate. People can either enter their data online or send it through the mail. The snail mail participants only watch and count every other week.

One of these days I hope to see a few mourning doves show up to round out my visitors stats. I don’t know how likely that is, however. Several of the ones who used to visit regularly were gradually picked off by the resident red tail hawk, so I can’t blame the survivors for finding my yard an inhospitable place. I’ve tried to create a hawk-safe place for them to eat, but they either haven’t found it or haven’t decided to trust it yet. It’s not that I begrudge the red tail hawk its food, but...y’know.