Birdie Buffet Update:
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Spring is really here, in the PNW- soft sunny days of warmer weather and everything blooming and growing.
Besides Sam, now a squirrel named Curley and at least one of the baby squirrels — hard to guess if it’s more than one because four of them are identical- anyway, they are climbing up on my kitchen window sill to peek in at me and tell me to come out on the patio and bring SNACKS.
Sam makes multiple trips per day and prefers two peanuts at a time. Pretty sure they just end up buried somewhere so after awhile I hand Sam a shelled walnut piece, and she sits on the patio chair closest to the door and eats it while I chat at her.
Curley ONLY wants shelled walnuts and turns up her nose at both peanuts and filberts when offered. She’s a bit aggressive and will try to run off other squirrels so I have to be quick serving her to keep her happy and peaceful. She grabs her walnut piece and runs.
The four babies gain more confidence by the day, and now will try to snatch a peanut before a big squirrel or a Jay can get to it. But I can tell that they still feel vulnerable.
They will stretch out their hind legs, belly low to the ground, and wiggle slowly towards the corner of the patio where they can slip through the tall leaves of the not yet blooming bank of day lilies with their peanut prizes. Have to slowly verify that the coast is clear!
But what I’ve been noticing lately is how well the Jays communicate what they want.
Not only do a couple of them now tap on my kitchen window with their beaks to ask me to come outside, more are fluffing up their feathers to let me know they are thinking “filberts, please!” If they are going to accept a peanut they don’t give the fluffy signal.
If they don’t want a peanut but they forgot to fluff, they will take the peanut and hide it in the planter and then fluff for me like a do over.
What peanut??!
Or, take the peanut, hop across the patio to me and toss it at my feet, then fly up to sit on the planter and fluff up. 🤣
If they want a second filbert and I try to pass off a peanut after they already took one filbert and put it in the back of their throat, they will sit on the planter and make a big show of burping up the filbert they already have and roll it out to the end of their beak,
holding it up for me to see:
“See THIS!?”
“THIS is what I WANT!”
After such a demonstration, how can I deny them??
They seem to be molting right now, with loose looking feathers here and there, but I haven’t found any on the ground, yet. I have a little collection of their beautiful blue feathers from years past that I keep on a side table in my living room.
They talk to me more now, sitting on the tall geranium planters or in the big rhododendron bush right next to the patio. They speak to me in a soft gurgling voice. They come closer to me than they used to, too. Really close. We make eye contact more.
They watch everything I do with the squirrels, and everything I give them.
That’s how they decided that sometimes they want filberts vs peanuts:
Because they watched the squirrels turn down peanuts and get filberts.
The Jays even grab pieces of walnut sometimes, now. After all, the squirrels like them!
But if I want the Jays to go back to peanuts, all I have to do is toss a few out on the lawn.
There’s immediately a race to see which Jay gets to them first. They are intensely competitive. Never mind that the last five times they demanded filberts. If a peanut is up for grabs and a squirrel or another Jay or gawd forbid a CROW might want it, the Jays will yell and race to grab it first. Every time.
BTW, Mr Rabbit is back, enjoying the balmy weather and hanging out under the big camellia tree again, sucking down dandelion stems like they’re spaghetti noodles.. 🥰
