"Standing Room Only", is what it was like at our feeders yesterday. Never saw so many American Goldfinches vieing for a perch. They filled the feeders and many more were waiting in the shrubs behind. We estimated we had over 100 goldfinch customers at our bird feeder restaurant. Plus over 60 juncos and we still have Fox Sparrows here.
At first I thought this one had only one leg, but then realized it was standing on one leg to keep the other leg warm. This is a thermoregulatory mechanism used by birds.
It hopped over and you can see it has 2 perfectly good legs. The seed eaters do OK in the storms because they can come to the feeders. It's the insect eaters and berry eaters (all berries are gone) we worry about. There's no sign of our Eastern Phoebe pair, hope they went back to VA. We watched our American Robin pair dig through the snow at the base of every plant in the garden, turning over the leaf litter. Fortunately we mulched the garden with leaves before winter and we actually saw the robin get some little caterpillar-like things under the leaf litter. Good reason to put leaves on your garden, it's a place for insects and worms to hide and provide robin food in such bad weather. Plus it protects the plants from cold and frost heave.Photos © Lillian Stokes, 2007
1 comment:
"Oh My Gosh" was my gasped response as your first picture opened on my screen. How neat to have so many goldfinches (and how fortunate for the goldfinches to have you providing all that food!)
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