My new feeder

My new bird feeder for my front yard was delivered today. It's an attractive thing and I'm very happy with it. It's a chalet style and it allegedly will hold up to 20 lbs. of birdseed! That should cut down on my having to run back and forth to the birdseed barrel every day or so. Of course, it is imperative that my new squirrel baffle works perfectly, otherwise those 20 lbs. of seed will be going down squirrel gullets and I'll still be making frequent trips to refill. As soon as I get it installed, I'll post a picture of it here.

The bird feeders are getting a lot of traffic these days and the suet feeders particularly are being hit hard. I've been using a new (to me) kind of suet made by Royal Wing. It's billed as "no melt" and its base is peanut butter. It comes in several different flavors - one with nuts, one with oranges, one with berries, etc.  I usually get some of every kind that the store has on hand when I shop, but I can't tell that the birds prefer one kind to another. They seem to like them all. And the woodpeckers in particular, especially the little Downies, just go nuts over it! Carolina Wrens, Carolina Chickadees, Brown-headed Nuthatches, Northern Cardinals, and Northern Mockingbirds all have been observed eating the stuff. No wonder it disappears so quickly! It's a good thing that it is reasonably priced. If you are looking for a suet to use in your yard, I can unqualifiedly recommend the Royal Wing "no melt."

My garden has a bumper crop this year of all the wild berries that the birds love - things like beautyberry, pokeweed berry, and elderberry - and they are already being eaten by the birds. Soon enough, though, the berries will be gone and then they will rely even more heavily on the bird feeders as autumn turns into winter.  I'm happy to have my new feeder, as well as my two new squirrel feeders, which should keep all the hungry critters in my yard well-fed.