Rain Gryphon

This afternoon at the cake feeder:



A male starling (you can tell by the corners of the beak - boys are blue, girls are pink - seriously) attacks the cake feeder. I think he's pretty young, firstly because he's still got a lot of brown in his plumage (mature males have a beautiful 'oil on water' sheen to them), but also because he's clearly not had a lot of experience perching on a feeder as he eats. He was flapping and making the feeder bang around the entire time, until he finally managed to get some cake.




A pair of House Sparrows out for diner. Instead of eating through the openings in the feeder, they both stuck their entire bodies down inside to get at the cake.




A White Breasted Nuthatch strikes a dramatic pose. No nuts will go unhatched while he's on the job! For whatever reason, these guys like to perch upside down a lot. You can see the big talon on the rearward-facing toe that lets him dig in and get a secure grip.

Clear, bitterly cold night, the first of the season, although it will be mild and sunny again tomorrow. I enjoy thinking of the little birds, snug in the nestboxes that I lined with aspen shavings (and the one that the Sparrow hen cleaned out and lined with grass). I still intend to build and deploy an actual proper night shelter box, for when it gets seriously cold.

I started putting out the high-calorie cakes a few days ago (beef fat, sugar, cracked corn, and black oil sunflower seed - a disgusting mess, but the birds seem to like it, plus the fat is filling, and keeps them warm through the night), and the birds seem to be finding them well enough. I had a (mated?) pair of Nuthatches visiting one of the cake feeders today, which surprised me. I've never seen Nuthatches here. They're forest birds, and you just don't see them in open country. I wonder if they were going somewhere (they don't migrate), or were maybe just out and about and saw everyone tucking in to the cake feeders. They hang upside down while they eat, plus are sort of comical-looking to begin with (no neck - just a head on a round body), so fun to look at.

I also saw a fairly large flock (a dozen or so) of wild Turkeys a few days back, picking through a harvested corn field.

This has been a really, really satisfying year for seeing and interacting with birds. I even got to see some babies still in their nest.