Birdie Buffet update:
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I have really been going through a lot of peanuts and walnut pieces and even handfuls of very small filberts that I buy from a local farmer, he calls it a “Squirrel Box,” but it’s the Jays who are going through them like crazy. They are tag teaming knocking on the kitchen window to beg for them all day. For awhile they wanted peanuts — after they saw the squirrels liked them, but now they are fixated on filberts.
I will try to tempt them with a peanut, and once in a great while they will go for it, but mostly not these days. They know how to get me to give them whatever they want: All they have to do is sit on the tall geranium planter across from my kitchen door and fluff up all of their feathers so they look like a big blue ball of airy down. Ms Pretty Bird was the first one to perfect it but now about half of them are learning her tricks. “How to beguile the Human.” I laugh and let them choose the nuts they want. They want TWO.
The crows have been here many times today, too and they somehow ditched Junior, the teenager who refuses to grow up. They evidently figured out that I wasn’t kidding: Be quiet here or I won’t toss you any peanuts. So they have been showing up a few or several at a time, without the loud mouth kid. But there’s a new problem with the crows. They are very interested in the sunflower hearts sprinkled on the ground by the big rhododendron bush for the ground feeding birds and Mr Rabbit. Mr Rabbit has been coming around to eat them and he’s definitely figured out that I am the one who’s putting them out there, so he keeps an eye on me as he nibbles on dandelion stems, and hustles over as soon as he sees me putting out a new batch. But late this afternoon he was enjoying his treat of sunflower hearts and I got busy in the kitchen and didn’t notice that two crows had muscled their way in and taken over, and Mr Rabbit was shunted aside. I missed seeing exactly how it went down but I didn’t like it. The crows can be bullies. So, I went outside and loudly clapped my hands in disapproval. The crows took off, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr Rabbit bolt from behind the day lily patch by the patio. He hadn’t gone very far away.
