For the past week i have a dozen cardinals in addition to the above.. Dont know why there are so many and why now ?

Have one feeder out on front.....and for past few days, about 20 to 30 birds at all times. Chickadees, titmouse (mice?), various sparrows, junko's, jays, woodpeckers and about a dozen cardinals. All taking turns at the feeder, with a big puddle on ground below. Plain old BOSS. Doves like the cheap mixed stuff, but I don't have any.

Have to hang the feeder up inside a dense bushy tree.....in this case a crab apple.....else the Sharp Shined hawks or Cooper's hawks will make a run at em.

This morning, about a dozen robin's showed up. Boy is their timing off.

Cardinals, Sparrows, what we call Snowbirds, Jays and a few odd assorted other songbirds.  Have two Pileated Wood Peckers, they do a Mexican Standoff at one suet feeder daily, have three or four different Downy woodpeckers and a couple Hairy(Downy size with a Red Spot on back of head) woodpeckers.  Happy little monsters.

Has been a Bald Eagle on occasion when the carcass is not frozen solid on the Coyote I dropped last year.  Been cold enough has not decayed all too fast.

I buy a 50 pound bag of cracked corn.. lasts about a month.. $8. takes you all the way !

 Well,,,in this high desert country,,we don't get any of the beautiful colored birds,,maybe a robin or two every so often. We get a lot of Humming birds so I keep two feeders out but they be back maybe another month,,,,

 Funniest thing,,,bout 7-8 years ago we started seeing  some "wild" parakeets,,they'd be either all green or all yellow would come around and then not see em for a month then here they are,,,!! I put some seed out but they just come and go,,haven't seen em yet this year,,,,,,

When I started feeding birds, I had 36 male cardinals not counting females. but the squirrels , black birds and grackles  and coons ate a lot. Then I found out that Cardinals liked safflower seeds and squirrels, blackbirds, and grackles did not like that seed. and I can get it at the local elevator in a 50 lb bag for $ 28 - $33 which is about 1/3 of what sunflower seeds cost.  There are a lot more houses here now , and more people feeding them. We have 2-3 bluebirds 12 cardinals, nuthatches , orioles ( eat grape jelly) Flickers, several kinds of woodpeckers, several kinds of other small birds. Kids love to feed them. When there is snow in the forecast , we can get a dozen more male cardinals.

   Have lots of different kinds of woodpeckers at suit feeders yesterday for first time had a   Pileated woodpecker was about the size of a crow.

 Hey Steve,,,that right there is an almost perfectly choreographed setting for a Norman Rockwell postcard picture,,,,,,maybe if you'da been a tad closer,,,,,,

 Aw,,I was just teasing you, Steve,,,,, That still is a great timing picture with the two cardinals and the four others staged around them. I have no idea what the four are,,,they look like the Quail around here with the tufted heads,,,,??

  "A cold wintry day,waiting on the morning fog to clear, and the groceries to be delivered"

  

The other four are female Cardinals.

Black oil sunflower seed is what the birds like the best here. They eat it first, had my own cracked corn and they would not eat the corn. 20$ for a fifty lb. bag.

I get the bird seed by the 50lb gag (econo).  Has lots of cracked corn.

I found suet blocks on sale a while back and the wood peckers are going nuts over it.  I get three kinds of wood peckers in, but piliated are not around here.

   Are you serious Mr, lusty ???????  Since feral cats arent native to the US they do huge amounts of damage to song birds and other wild life.

   They dont last long in my neighbor hood, for that matter most of the county.

 I believe those are Mourning Dove, which are very plentiful around here. Their kinfolk, the White Wing Dove started moving in bout 4-5 years ago. They are very friendly and I can walk up to them bout 10 feet before they spook. I used to hunt the Mourning Dove back in the day and are good sport because they fly so darned FAST !! Good eating too,,,

Only trouble is cleaning, roll the breast out then what to do with the rest of the bird, not enough meat there to make a tablespoon full.

 Hey Dave,,that is all we used to keep on them Doves. Like you say, just roll the breast out, break both wing bones and chunk the breast in the cooler Some people did not care for dove meat but I sure did,,,,

 I knew a fellar that used to skin the bird, pull the guts and keep the whole bird,,wings and all,,!!! He'd get mad at us for keeping only the breasts,,,,

This guy has become a regular talks really loud to me if I am outside anywhere near,

shameless dude wrote: the old lady.....oooops....i mean the loving wife has several doves in a large cage in the house, we were just blessed with another baby one last week! i keep telling her we gotta turn them loose in the spring (started with that statement 2 years ago) and she's afraid that someone will shoot them! whew!

yeah, Shameless,,I remember you talkin bout them doves way back then,,, Do ya'll talk with them ?  They prolly would get shot seeing as them dove are now not afraid of humans.. Our 4th oldest Son had an apartment  when going to college where there were many doves and he could mimic their calls perfectly,,, The last time Jerry and family were here from Dallas,,he started doing that and some dove that were on the fence were watching him really close,,,then,,started talkin back and forth,,,,amazing,,!!

 Hey Gordy,,that right there is a beautiful Wood Pecker,,!!  I've only seen one woodpecker in my life bout 10 years ago and he/she musta been lost,,,,

 I've heard em up in the mountains,,but never seen them,,

Around here feral cats are ones that got made because the owners of their barn cats don't fix them.  They are regular cats so I don't know what you are talking about that they are not native to the US.  I trapped ours and got them fixed.  They stay around here because the wife feeds them.  You can tell a fixed feral cat by looking at the left ear.  The tip will be gone.  There is nothing wrong with a fixed feral cat.  They keep our house and barn mouse free.  We have two new ones that have  been coming for dinner.  I need to trap them and get them nutted.  I'll probably need to take them to the Humane Society. I think they charge $40 for doing it.  The wife and I took a Trap Neuter Release(TNR) class so we could get them fixed for $25.  But with this pandemic they aren't making appointments any longer. 

Barn cat are feral cats.  I just don't understand what you are talking about that are not native to the US!

 Feral cats are not indigenous, they came over with Europeans, there is plenty wrong them.  

Large amounts of  song bird decline is blamed on feral cats, especially ground nesters.

   It has been shown bells around their necks are ineffective , they learn to hunt with them, very destructive.

   It isnt natural for such an effective hunter up here praying on birds.

 I caught this guy/gal getting into ole Bowser's groceries this morning,,,I expect he/she was on the way north but ole Shameless's latest Winter Storm caught him on the road and he had to stop for all the dang snow just a flying in this area,,gots bout 3" so far.

I've never seen one like this one . He has a speckled underbelly and a red slash under his cheeks with a long sharp lookin beak. He was cracking Pecans and eating the nut,,so he's done that before. Anybody recognze him/her,,,,??

That is some kind of wood pecker.  We have some of those in IL.

Sorry I am not a classification specialist beyond just "wood pecker"

That looks like a northern flicker.

The big wood pecker is a Pileated......inspiration for Woody the Wood Pecker. Size and sound.

 Yep,,that is a pretty good description of this bird ,,altho,,this bird was almost the size of a Mourning Dove. I guess he/she is gonna sit this storm out in the big pine tree in the background. He fount him a good perch under some branch cover and fluffed and fluffed his feathers til he almost looked like twice his size,,,, I just checked him out with the flashlight and looked like he was asleep,,,,,

 The snow finally stopped a few minutes ago and lookin like bout 13",,,,,,

 Well,,I been checkin out my "fluffed up" Traveller Bird and he had been hanging around since it been way cloudy and overcast and COLD. Guess he ain't wantin to do any flyin in such weather. I went and got a bag of Wild Bird Food and he been eatin that all day,, The sun finally come out bout an hour ago and I ain't seen him,,so that must of been what he was waitin for,,,, I sent a note to ole Shameless with the bird,,,he'll like it,,,,

shameless dude wrote: i gots sum peanuts in the shells at our local farm store, throw them out under the feeders and watch the 4 legged robbers go after them, they leave the feeders alone that way.

 Well,,that right there is one way of keeping the varmits away from the birdies,,,,,

 I'm thinkin I may go and get a feeder seeing as this traveler stopped by to visit a day or two,,,,but I gots so dang many cats that hang around the garage,,,,,,???