Bird pecking order

[Mike Nolan]

An interesting article based on data from the folks at Cornell on the pecking order of birds at a feeder. Can't say I've ever seen any wild turkeys at ours, though we do sometimes see them on the edge of town:

https://wapo.st/3CVFib6

This link should be good for two weeks.

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[navlys]

Mike
That was a very interesting article. My friends who live on the cape are always inundated with wild turkeys. They probably chase the other birds away.

[Italiancook]

I enjoyed the article, Mike. I wanted bird feeders this spring. I researched and talked with a feed store employee. I was all set to buy when someone told me they have to take in the feeders at night because of the deer. We have deer, so I squelched the plan. I'm unwilling to carry feeders in an out. I switched to hummingbird feeders. I planned to have a neighbor make a special contraption to hold the feeders off the deck railing over the ground. Then I read -- I believe Mike said this -- that raccoons like the sweet hummingbird food. We have raccoons and I didn't want to encourage them to climb on the deck and lean over to swipe the feeder. So I've given up on enjoying birds.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a raccoon climb up the window to access a hummingbird feeder this summer, knocking it down in the process (fortunately it didn't break), so I moved them higher up. It is also possible that raccoons were accessing some of the hanging hummingbird feeders as well, but I didn't see that on the security camera replay.

My wife takes in her ground feeders at night, otherwise the raccoons and possums pretty much empty them out overnight. She also brings in a tube feeder for the same reason.

[Italiancook]

I admire your wife's energy and dedication to the birds. Now, I have another reason not to have feeders -- opossums. We also have them.

[BakerAunt]

We have also had deer come to the bird feeders. In fact, we blamed one that was knocked down on squirrels until we saw the deer at them. My husband will put out some food when the birds are around in the winter, but he makes sure not to put in so much that deer target the feeders.

[Mike Nolan]

The raccoons and possums only come out at night. We've also had a cat show up on camera a few times, it looks too well fed to be feral so I'm guessing it lives in the neighborhood.

There's at least one fox den nearby, probably in our back fence neighbor's yard (their gardener thinks there are two fox dens, our neighbor feeds them), we've heard the vixen calling (it sounds like a cat in pain) and we've seen a red fox quite a few times running through the yard, but as far as I can tell the foxes don't come up on the back patio.

We did have a river otter on the back patio once several years ago, we think it had gotten flushed out of a stream a mile or so away by heavy rains and was trying to find its way back. The Lincoln paper had a story last week on Nebraska's effort to reestablish a river otter population in Nebraska, apparently they've been trading wild turkeys for river otters from other states. They think the population is over 2000 now.

We've had coyotes in the neighborhood, and a deer once or twice but I haven't seen one lately. As the surrounding developments have built up, the larger wildlife have gotten more scarce.

[Italiancook]

I don't think I'd feel comfortable with a neighbor feeding fox. There's a fox den behind a neighbor's backyard. It's fun to sit out in the early morning and see a fox scramble across the backyard into the next yard. I worry about the neighbor's small dog, but I don't really know if a fox would bother with it.

[Mike Nolan]

Foxes generally won't go after anything bigger than a rabbit, though there have been reports of them catching very small dogs or cats.

Coyotes, on the other hand, have been known to catch 30 pound or larger dogs.

[chocomouse]

We used to have a den of fox every spring in our field, but lately we've seen only a stray fox passing through. Back in those days, we had a young cocker spaniel and would often see her playing with 4-5 kits in the orchard. Sometimes she chased them, and sometimes they were chasing her. Once in a while, the vixen would join in - that bothered me!

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