Category Archives: Birds

November 10, 2025 · 23:50

Other Critter Neighbors

In addition to the squirrels (or whatever they are) burrowing under the pergola, and the flocks of wrens, finches, hummingbirds, and scrub jays all feeding at the feeders hanging from the top, we also have some bigger raptors that regularly roost on top of the pergola, particularly at night.

I haven’t caught any of them on camera yet (they spook easily) but I’ve seen the owl(s) several times.

Even if I can’t catch them live, it’s obvious where they like to roost when looking out over the back wall for dinner, or where they bring dinner to feast in peace. The little bits of rodents and small birds, and what appears to be a significant amount of (probably) rabbit fur indicate that the owls are well fed.

It’s sort of a mess – but that’s why we bought a power washer. Now I just need to find the time to assemble it…

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October 27, 2025 · 23:10

Launch Leftovers

I’m home, but I know who’s the most upset about me being gone for a couple of days. The birds! The sparrows and finches and scrub jays who are chowing down on the seed in the feeders, and who are emptying them in a day, a day and a half at most. When I’m gone for three days, those feeders are seriously empty when I get home. They even eat the parts that they don’t like!

While refilling the feeders about 18:30, there were these amazing, bright, high-level clouds visible to the west:

They look like noctilucent clouds, but those would be incredibly rare this far south. Normally you would only see them way north, in the polar regions.

However, that’s toward where Vandenberg is, and launches out of there are getting close to being a daily occurrence. A quick check showed that a launch had happened at 17:43, just about 45 minutes earlier.

So, there you go! Launch leftovers in the sunset sky. And happy birds now that their feeders are full again!

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October 5, 2025 · 21:56

Bird Butts

I had just refilled the bird seed feeders for the day and wanted to capture the chaos and shennanigans going on with the house finches and house sparrows fighting for spots. (There are lots of spots, four feeders like this one, plus the wires and the beams of the pergola…)

I thought of trying to set up a tripod, but went with uber simplification instead. I just put a chair underneath the feeder, turned the video on, put the phone facing up toward the bottom of the feeder overhead, let it run for a about a half hour, and then edited out the five minutes at the beginning when the birds were still spooked because I had been out there.

In checking out the result, I was surprised to see and hear the iPhone and the chair it’s resting on getting pelted by seeds dropped from above. Don’t worry, the squirrel and the scrub jays will take care of those.

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September 25, 2025 · 23:27

Bandit Scrub Jays

Just when I thought that the bird seed couldn’t be disappearing any faster, someone sent a memo to the scrub jays.

They’re big birds, very intelligent, and with beautiful coloration. I enjoy having them here.

Too intelligent sometimes. They’re a bit too big to perch on the feeders, but they’ve figured out that they can hang upside down off of the side, do a chin up, and use their beaks to just scrape whole handfuls of seed over the edge to the ground below.

Once there’s a two-day supply of seed dumped on the ground, then they can hop down and eat it at their leisure.

At one point this morning I saw three separate jays hanging from three separate feeders and all doing this trick together. The finches weren’t much more happier than I was as they sat on top of the wall and the pergola and waited for the jays to leave so they could get back to their own looting and pillaging.

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September 16, 2025 · 23:00

They Don’t Like These

One thing I’ve noticed in refilling the birdseed feeders is that the bottom is always full of these little, round, red seeds:

I don’t know what’s wrong with them – do they not taste good? Are they difficult to pick up? Are they hard and a pain to crack open?

It’s yet another mystery.

Maybe the squirrels will eat them? Waste not, want not!

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September 13, 2025 · 22:43

Finch At Feeder

I refilled the birdseed feeder AGAIN – two days this cycle. And I updated my Chewy “Autoship” order to once every three weeks instead of once every twelve weeks.

As we’ve brought patio furniture, some shelves, a BBQ, chairs, and other stuff onto the large back patio near the pergola, after dining the birds are retiring to rest in the shade on the new resting and roosting locations. I haven’t seen any nest building activity yet (that’s more of a spring thing) but I really would prefer they stay off of the telescope at least. There may be a BBQ cover in the telescope’s near future. (Form follows function!)

They’re also starting to peck at the small apples growing on the apple tree, but they seem to be leaving the pears alone. We’ll see what’s left to harvest in a couple of weeks.

GO TEAM BIRDS!

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September 11, 2025 · 23:52

Proof Of Life – September 11th

Bird seed.

At the old house in West Hills we would put out a cup or two a day in bird seed and it would attract house finches, sparrows, juncos, mourning doves, squirrels, and whatever else happened to be passing through. We might get as many as ten or twelve mourning doves, but the other species were smaller flocks.

In the new house, I’ve put up four much bigger hanging feeders full of seed. No juncos, no mourning doves, one scrawny squirrel who as far as I can tell hasn’t yet figured out how to get to the hanging feeders, but will feast on the droppings on the ground. LOTS of house finches and sparrows.

When I put up the first feeder and just had the one out there, it took about two weeks to get emptied. Just a handful of birds had found it. But there were more every day.

When I put up the other three (total of four), the floodgates opened.

They cleaned them all out in a week. I refilled.

They cleaned them all out in four days. I refilled.

Three days. I refilled.

I noticed today that they’re all empty again, and it hasn’t even been 36 hours.

How? Well, when I looked out there this morning there were 50+ birds.

Paging Alfred Hitchcock! The white courtesy phone for Alfred Hitchcock! The black courtesy phone for Roger Thornhill!

If you see us starting a Go Fund Me for bird seed, you’ll know why.

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August 30, 2025 · 23:54

Bird Buffet

To be perfectly clear, because I don’t want to be considered a monster, we have set up a buffet to feed the local birds, we are not having a buffet for ourselves consisting of birds.

In the last month I got two of the hummingbird feeders up and one of the seed feeders, but we’ve attracted enough birds so that there’s sometimes a traffic jam, particularly at the one seed feeder. Today I found more of our bird feeders in all of the stacks of boxes filling up the garage and did some work out on the pergola putting up hooks, then cleaned all of the feeders. When all was said and done, we now have four of each kind of feeder, the four hummingbird feeders at the back over the brick wall and the four seed feeders at the front hanging over the turf.

If you look at the first hummingbird feeder on the far left in the first picture, you’ll see this one wasting no time in testing out the new nectar. I literally had just put it up and walked off to take the picture, maybe ten or fifteen seconds, and this one was all over it. And stupid me was worried that it might take a while for the birds to “find” the new feeders.

Here you can see all eight, so let the feasting begin!

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August 28, 2025 · 23:38

Proof Of Life – August 28th

The good news is that word has spread among the local songbirds about the seed feeder that I hung last weekend.

The hummingbirds found those feeders almost immediately, and we now routinely see three or four or seven at a time. They’re amazing.

It took a little bit longer for the seed feeder to get discovered. And then, it was just one bird for several days. Then two, but that was it.

This morning when I got up, there were two dozen or more sparrows and finches out there, three or four at a time at the feeder, the rest either perched on the pergola above while they waited their turn or on the astroturf down below picking at the droppings. I’ll probably have to expedite putting up a second or third seed feeder.

I also saw a large scrub jay up on top of the pergola, surveying the whole scene. It’s probably not going to fit at the feeder, and I don’t think they’re feeding on smaller birds, so it might just be curiosity.

Who knew that one of my goals in life was to have the local scrub jay population watching me and wondering what the hell I’m up to next?

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August 24, 2025 · 23:28

Once More, With FEELING And Four-Part Harmony

It’s late Sunday night, tomorrow is Monday and we start all over again.

The good news is that the cyclic nature of life means we get a chance every day to have thunderboomers like yesterday or sunsets like this.

And every day has the potential for joys, small and large. Today, I saw a sparrow discover the new birdseed feeder that I put up, the first that I know of to visit. It’s a start!

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