icarusancalion

I put the bird feeder out of deer reach (though they can still get the other one so I'm leaving it empty). My aunt came home from the hospital night shift to find two deer nibbling away at it. That's one more than I knew of.

I figured it would be a hungry winter for the deer because it seems they had an extra mating season in our warm autumn. To replace the lost bird seed -- and to draw them away from my front yard garden, yeep -- I tossed some apples in the woods.

Checked this afternoon to see if they (or other critters) had found them.

Oh, heck yeah. All apples gone. Them's some hungry deer.

It'll be a bit before I can put out some feed corn. I figure a full deer in the woods is a deer that doesn't want the bother of walking alllll the way round to my garden and a bird feeder she can't reach.

A little bird feeder hangs in my tree now, a red and white house complete with chimney and miniature wreath on the door. This was the Xmas gift I knew was coming, tu whit:

Me: "The birds seem to like the sunflower seeds. I figure I'll stop off at the bird place and--"
Mom: "No, no--don't!"
Me: *stares*
Mom (chagrined): "Um. Perhaps you might want to wait till after Christmas?"

It's as much entertainment for the (indoor) cats as for the birds, though I figure when you drop a townhouse on a piece of land, you wipe out a few food sources and have a responsibility to replace them.

Callie, the gray kitty, meowred herself silly the first day. She was zonked out by the time I got home, too tired to move. (She's learned moderation.) Rothy, one of the kitty boys, asked me to put a feeder in his backyard window. (Sorry, son, I'll never fill it if I have to bushwhack my way there.)

Anyhow, the birds and spectators are pleased and so am I. It usually takes three days for them to go through the seed.

Saturday night I ran out. Worked Sunday so I picked up more seed on the way home, this time a cheaper "Eastern US" mix. Cheerfully filled it up.

It was all gone by 11am.

Either they love the new mix, a squirrel's figured out how to get into it (though I'd expect more spillage, as a squirrel would have to work pretty hard to get it), or they were really hungry after a day of it hanging empty. It snowed today, so maybe they knew and stocked up on the bird equivalent of toilet paper and milk.

Or maybe the cheaper seed's like potato chips, and they're going through it faster? I dunno. So far today the fresh supply seems to be holding up.