Snowed lazily on and off all day, and then a brief blizzard in the evening. Not much below freezing, though, and we’re supposed to have another mild spell coming up. Usually the juncoes come first. We have had some debate as to why it’s called a “purple” finch when the males’ decorative colour is more of a cranberry colour … my husband eventually pointed out that their poop is purple. True, and here I assumed ornithologists were not a comical lot.
It is interesting to see the ways different birds approach the feeders. The woodpeckers are very frequent visitors but always approach from several yards away, hopping along the railing until they’re under the suet feeder, then fly up to it. Because their legs are attached at a slant, to help brace them when on a tree trunk, they look like they’re bouncing along on their bellies. Although we see both male and female, there’s only one at a time on the feeder. They are very wary and fly off on the least provocation. The other birds always give way to them, though, as they are the second biggest bird that uses the suet feeder; the chickadees and nuthatches are much smaller.
The biggest bird using it is the whiskeyjack (aka grey jay or Canada jay, but I prefer “whiskeyjack”, which is based on the Ojibway name for them). They always visit in pairs, and despite being quite large, a bit bigger than a robin, both of them use it at once, one on each side. The bird book says they’re quite bold but I have yet to have one approach when I’m out on the balcony with a handful of seed. Unlike the chickadees, who will eat out of your hand if you hold still long enough.
We have two pairs of nuthatches, white-breasted and red-breasted (actually more peach-breasted – and I haven’t figured out a funny explanation for that yet). With both, the two will visit the suet feeder together, perching on different sides, or even one on the bottom. Nuthatches are famous for being quite comfortable upside down, and can often be seen coming down a tree trunk head first. The red-breasteds are smaller than the white-breasteds, and will leave the feeder if the whites approach. On one occasion, a white-breasted on the feeder dropped a crumb of suet into the beak of its mate, waiting underneath! Both will also eat seeds, despite being described as insect eaters in the bird book, but the white-breasteds like them more and will sometimes go for seed instead of suet.
The chickadees are our main visitors and they are very interesting. Although there’s room for three or four of them on the seed feeder, even more on the suet feeder, they take turns. You will occasionally see two of them feeding at once, one at each end of the perch, with a good six inches between them. They usually take their seed and fly with it to a nearby tree, where they peck off the shell, eat the seed, and return for more. They seem to do this in some kind of pecking order, because sometimes one arrives and chases off one already there. Since we often have six or eight visiting at the same time, the others wait until the one (or two) at the feeder leave. They’re quite organized and there are extended periods when they take turns nicely. Once in a while a chickadee will actually sit on the perch the feeder to peck off the shell, and chase (by hopping at it and peeping loudly) any which tries to join in. This I assume must be the boss chickadee. And since we see them so often, I’ve identified four or five other calls they make besides the traditional “chickadee” they’re named for. Despite seeing them so often, though, I can’t tell them apart, except for one, this year, with a dark patch on his side.
Who else? Oh, yes, redpolls. We hardly had any this year, I guess due to the mild winter – they’re probably all further north. They descend in a disorganized mob and spend as much time chasing each other away as they do eating, making a kind of silvery chirping all the while. Goldfinches are much the same when they show up in the spring – they go to the small seed feeder, which has perches for six birds, but they apparently can’t stand to eat when they can see another goldfinch nearby, so they spend a lot of time chasing each other off. Occasionally they get arranged facing away from each other and you will actually see six of them on the feeder at once. They do make a lovely noise while they’re at it.
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