Pirates of the Bird Feeder

Birds, Reflections, Suet Cakes

Hello and welcome.

Getting ready for winter, my husband hung the bird feeder earlier this week. I love the location where I can see it from our kitchen window. The window is above the sink so when I’m standing at the sink, preparing meals or doing dishes I can enjoy watching the birds at the feeder. Sometimes I just pause there, even without having work to do, just to watch the bird activity.

So far we have mostly had sparrows eating from the feeder – lots of sparrows. I am calling them the Pirates of the Bird Feeder, not because I have seen any with an eye patch or a pegleg, but with that many sparrows I’m certain one of them must be named Jack. (For those who don’t know “Jack Sparrow” is in reference to the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.)

On Tuesday I made some suet cakes so we could hang the suet feeder as well. To make the suet cakes I melted beef tallow then mixed in some chicken feed. I poured it into some dishes that were smaller than the size of the suet cage then put it in the freezer to solidify. On Wednesday my husband hung the suet cage.

It didn’t take long for this woodpecker to find it.

We will be adding some sunflower seeds this weekend and I expect we will see many more birds show up once we do.

Thanks for visiting. Will you be feeding the birds in your neighborhood this winter?

17 thoughts on “Pirates of the Bird Feeder”

  1. Feeding birds is one of the great pleasures of my life! I have five different peanut feeders outside every window and a little plastic tray of sunflower kernels stuck to my kitchen window. It took the birds a few years to really take to it but they are tapping against window every day.

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  2. No, I don’t hang birdfeeders because I can’t reach the tall tree branches, and the year I tried to hang one from the flower holder thing, it was too low and the squirrels got into it. But my neighbour feeds them so I sometimes see lovely cardinals in the winter.

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    1. My husband picked up the new bird feeder at Menards because we couldn’t find the one we used last year. I think this one is cute. (Looks like our barn and shed at the farm.) It’s nice that you can see the birds at your neighbor’s feeder. Our neighbor feeds the birds in her back yard, and we don’t have a view of that, but I think the birds go back and forth between her feeder and ours.

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    1. We get squirrel visitors as well, but I think they like my neighbors better because they serve peanuts. Two years ago, when I was making suet cakes and just hanging them with a ribbon (no cage) the squirrels would break the ribbon and steal the whole suet cake. Putting the suet in the cage fixed that problem.

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  6. Ruth, I was going to comment that it didn’t take the birds long to find the food, then you wrote that. I no longer feed birds at the house as I feed them at the Park and there are a lot of sparrows around here as well. But what is worrisome here at the house is we have Cooper’s Hawks in the neighborhood (and at the Park too) … they chase the birds and squirrels. The neighborhood Blue Jays screech to the other birds when they see a hawk nearby and they don’t stop screeching until it flies away.

    I just loaded up on more sunflower seeds and chipped peanuts for the Park. Now I’ve been back on a regular basis since Labor Day and the Jays and Red-bellied Woodpecker are helping themselves to the squirrels’ peanuts so I started supplementing them with sunflower seeds as I did before. The Chickadees at the Park get the tiny chipped peanuts – I have to shoo the others away as they can have a regular peanut. It is nice to watch the birds – very relaxing.

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    1. I have seen a hawk land near our bird feeder on a couple of occasions, and we have cats in the neighborhood who climb the arborvitae near the feeder or sit under it waiting for the unsuspecting bird, but I haven’t seen any of the birds become victims of the predators. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, but I don’t think it is happening much.

      Your park pals are very spoiled. 🙂

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      1. We’ve had hawks for a while now at the park and in the neighborhood. You may recall I quite feeding the birds and squirrels peanuts on the porch after a hawk got all of my squirrels shortly after the pandemic began. Sadly, my neighbor knew about it, watched it from his living room window and didn’t say anything. He is a hunter. Yes, my park pals are spoiled and we’re getting back to normal somewhat there … maybe in a year or so, it will be like before as to the squirrels and birds anyway. 🙂

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