Daily Pics #310.

Good morning everyone! It’s another one of those heavy cloud days making it very dull looking once again. But this is kind of typical winter weather so not really a big deal. There is also those lazy type of snowflakes floating down from those thick dark clouds. And it’s not windy this morning so they look real nice. Oops, the snowflakes have stopped. But the evening grosbeaks are here now filling up the feeder. They definitely add some beautiful, bright color on these dull cloudy days. Like having a feeder full of bright yellow lights. Hmm, something must have scared them. They flew. I mean totally gone.

But the redpolls have taken their place, 15 of them now, filling up the feeder. Well, sort of filling it up. They are so small that even 15 doesn’t do much. The feeder could hold twice that many redpolls. They seldom sit still, always running around searching for scraps of food among the shells. The grosbeaks open the sunflower seeds and eat the seed inside. But often there is a bit of that seed that sticks to the shells and that’s what the redpolls search for since they have such a hard time opening the seeds themselves. So the two birds work together very well so that nothing is wasted. The grosbeaks have returned again. They certainly have no trouble opening those sunflower seeds. They do it amazingly fast. And they empty that feeder quickly. So I put a more than normal supply of seeds out there this morning.

Chickadees were the first birds here this morning, but the redpolls were not far behind. The chickadees like the hanging feeders best. So, while the other birds are fighting for position on the feeder above, the chickadees are going back and forth quite happily to the hanging feeders. They just grab and seed and head back to this one bush to open their seeds. It’s really quite amazing how they can hold that slippery seed and then pound it open with their beaks and eat the seed inside. Without dropping it. Though on rare occasions they do drop it and immediately dive down to retrieve the seed, usually catching it before it hits the snow. They don’t like to waste food either.

Well, this morning, and all this week, I am showing a male and female of different bird species. Yesterday it was the redpolls, and today we have the evening grosbeaks, though I have shown these birds before, but the pics are different anyway. The featured image is the female evening grosbeak and the pic above is the male. Those lazy snowflakes are falling once more. I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2020 Steve McLeod.