Brrr... more seeds, please

Our bird feeder was hopping today -- Eastern Towhees, Northern Cardinals, Carolina Chickadees, and Tufted Titmice.

It was COLD today, with highs around 18°F, and a wind chill factor making it feel about 2°F.  We ventured forth for a bit of exercise (taking Mocha out and 'working out' at the local Y for awhile), but otherwise, we hung about indoors.

Goldfinches and feeders

An enjoyable part of feeding birds is watching them, of course. And we've been having a lot of fun watching the American goldfinches visiting the thistle feeder here in the mountains.

The activity is huge on the covered platform feeder; not only do we see the usual cardinals, tufted titmice, Carolina chickadees, and nuthatches, but also the Eastern towhees, who apparently think the platform isn't that different than the ground.

But the goldfinches are striking and always nice to see.

This evening there were 3 of them visiting the feeder shortly before dusk.

Feeding birds

In the mountains, our thistle and sunflower seed feeders received non-stop activity in early evening. Goldfinches ate niger seeds. Tufted Titmice, Carolina Chickadees, Northern Cardinals and White-Breasted Nuthatches took turns at the other feeder, after we refilled the box with black oil sunflower seeds.

We still have hummingbirds visiting the jewelweed patches, although having feeders up for them in a weekend place isn't really practical (or healthy for hummingbirds).

At home in the Piedmont of SC, we're still seeing ruby-throated hummingbirds at our flowers and feeders, but they've started to head south. We'll probably see the last visitor in mid-October, based on previous years.

Check out Operation RubyThroat to post your observations about what you see in the Eastern U.S. and Canada (where we see Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds from late spring to early fall). Bill Hilton, at Hilton Pond Natural History Center, an expert natural history investigator on hummingbird behavior, is partnering with Earth Trek in this Citizen Science project.

Bird feeders

I arrived in the mountains this afternoon on a quick overnight trip, to find goldfinches inhaling seeds from the thistle feeders. They had been absent last weekend (we'd brought the feeders in after our last visit). But they were avidly consuming seeds today.

The sunflower feeder was horizontal, presumably knocked over by a racoon or an opposum or wind (I don't think the young bear has made a reappearance).

I filled it up (at least temporarily) and the cardinals made a rapid reappearance.