Butter-butts

Winter tends to be a little slow around my back yard. Pigeons and Mourning Doves tend to dominate the landscape as well as the feeders. I feel silly paying top dollar for black oil sunflower seeds just to have them devoured in 20 minutes by a flock of unruly pigeons, but I do it nonetheless.

Last year I had one single Yellow-rumped Warbler that would stop by occasionally and visit my suet feeder. I assumed it was just one individual bird because I never saw more than one at a time. Who knows, maybe Butter-butts just have really good buffet-line manners and they were taking turns.

Anyway, this year word seems to have gotten around to the rest of the warblers that I serve a mean breakfast, because by 8:00 a.m. these days I have no less that 7 or 8 of them flitting about and generally just annoying the larger birds.

They're joined occasionally by a House Finch and a few American Goldfinches.


The Bluebirds are still hanging around too. That box is one that I made and gave to our neighbors. The birds check it out regularly, hopefully they'll nest there next Spring.