By Jennifer Wilson-Pines
If you haven’t already, now is the time to put up a bird feeder. With winter scarcity, birds will arrive to dine and fill your winter yard with color and life.
Look for a mix that is mostly black oil sunflower and white millet. Toss a little seed under the shrubs for the ground feeders, where you have raked leaves to provide natural mulch, and over-wintering for beneficial insects that are also a food resource for wrens and other small birds.
Even in a small yard, the birds have preferred areas. The Dark-eyed Junco’s, Song and White-throated Sparrows scurry shyly at the edges and under the shrubs, scratching and kicking among the leaves.
I always look forward to their appearance, the Junco’s in two-tone, soft gray or sooty black over downy white chests and a tiny chip of white beak. The Song Sparrow’s streaks of brown and buff vanish among the crisp oak leaves, while the White-throat has a bib of starchier white then the male House Sparrows they vie with for millet.
The Red-bellied Woodpecker swoops in like a buccaneer to seize a peanut or sunflower seed, scattering other birds with her long jabbing beak. Then she sweeps away to eat, or to stash the goodie away for latter, under our neighbor’s roof shingles.
The Downy Woodpecker is warier and prefers the suet feeder, first landing on a nearby tree and checking the terrain, then bobbing nervously up and down before settling in to snack.
The Blue Jays arrive in a dash of bright blue and white, shards of sky, shriek to clear the feeder platform, then stuff as many shelled peanuts into their beaks as manageable. Sometimes they try to squeeze in one more than is wise.
he Mourning Doves mill about in neatly belted tan trench coats, like commuters before the first coffee kicks in, mingling obliviously with the House Sparrow riffraff.
The Cardinals are the emblem of the winter bird, the warmth of red valiant against the aching frost. They like the twilight hours and are the first to arrive and last to leave, their chipping call greeting me as I go out to fill the feeders.
A few straggler Red-winged Blackbirds and Grackles take up a position among the jostling hordes of House Sparrows.
I imagine the House Sparrows with a Brooklyn accent, “Hey, who do youse tink yur pushin’ around heah?”
At the first sign of a problem they dash for the shelter of the vine tangle in the corner, “Yo, only a dope would be hangin’ out in da open wit a hawk makin’ a move.” I have been told it is politically incorrect to equate House Sparrows with Brooklynites. I am unsure if I have offended the Sparrows, the inhabitants of Kings County or both.
I must profess a sneaking admiration for the cheery, social, urban House Sparrows, non-native and semi-invasive feeder hogs though they may be. If ever a species has made lemonade from a lemon, they can make that claim.
Imagine being rudely crammed into a small cage with a dozen or so of your siblings and cousins, shoved in a noisome cargo hold, spend a couple of weeks pitching about in the dark, only to be released into a completely foreign land – on a different continent no less. They not only survived, but thrived, primarily on the discards of human society. I don’t see an insult in being tough, adaptable, and prosperous.
My husband is fond of reminding me that I “Shouldn’t anthropomorphize animals, they hate that,” but I am unrepentant. If you observe them closely, personalities and idiosyncrasies begin to emerge.
Some behaviors have their origin in genetic programming and evolutionary selection, like men not being able to ask for directions, but others seem individual. OK, so Sparrows may not actually prefer the Yankees to the Mets, but genetics cannot explain the Sparrows who watched and figured out how to beat the upside-down thistle feeder or the Starling that conquered the “Starling proof’ suet hanger.
If you enjoy your backyard birds, join the Great Backyard Bird Count, or Project Feeder Watch (you can find links at Cornell Lab of Ornithology) and you’ll be amazed at what you’ll see.
Backyard bird counts are needed for the upcoming North Nassau Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, Dec. 18, contact me via northshoreaudubon.org It’s a jungle out there, even in the dark of winter.
