Silver Lining of the Pandemic

How is it possible for the pandemic to have a silver lining? In 2020 all of us stayed home hunting for the best streaming series, searching for a tasty new recipe, walking our dogs endlessly around the neighborhood, ordering boxes and boxes and more boxes of stuff from Amazon, and reading our days away. Zoom was our best friend with endless hours of staring at screens—unless you were a first responder or an essential employee or a kid—with nothing to do but stare at screens called “school.” But for me, there was a silver lining.

That silver lining was getting to know up close and personal our back yard birds. During the summer I hung a hummingbird feeder close to our deck and planted bright red petunias nearby to attract the birds. Within a week, broadtail hummingbirds came almost every day entertaining us with their ability to hover in place, fly backwards, and provide a miniature dazzling show of colorful iridescent bodies and wings flapping at 53 beats per second.

Broadtail Hummingbird

I placed, in the backyard garden, a finch feeder with small black thistle seeds that finches prefer, and immediately house finches, as many as eight at a time, attached themselves vertically to this tube of food supply. Little did I know that I would be restocking food several times a week. By winter I noticed that finches seemed to “get-along” with others next to them on the feeder. They didn’t chase other birds away with loud vocalizations and wing-flapping unlike other species. Were they siblings from the same nest? Or did they have an easy temperament?

House Finch

Spotted Towhee

Dark-eyed juncos, on the other hand, seemed to prefer feeding by themselves, chasing off other juncos and other species from the brick deck pillars where we sprinkled white millet. Their hopping gait on any surface brought us smiles as did their method of millet consumption: scoop up a beak full, one after another in quick succession. The spotted towhee, on the other hand, took one tiny millet seed in its beak, cracked it, and let the chaff from the seed fall out of its beak before swallowing the kernel.

We decided the juncos were our backyard bullies, not wanting to share the spoils with others. I was curious, though, how did this behavior develop? Survival of the entire species would be compromised if a few birds dominated the food supply. Perhaps, the best fed males became stronger and more able to compete for a mate in the spring, thereby passing on the “strong male genes.” As you can see, biology can take over my thinking.

Dark-Eyed Junco

Back to the bird feeders. One of my favorites was the pair of northern flickers that hung out in our backyard all winter. Easily identified with orange underparts flashing in flight and a bright red cheek patch on the male, they were more cautious birds. They perched in high branches, ready to seize an opportunity at any feeding station when other birds were gone. While some birds had preferences, flickers used all food sources, the finch feeder, millet on the brick pillars, and the cylinder suet feeder. Being a type of woodpecker, they have claws enabling them to hang on the side of just about anything, and a tail used for balance curled underneath the tube of the finch feeder. While other birds disappeared from feeders between one and three pm each day, most likely to rest after being active since dawn, flickers took advantage of being the sole occupants of our backyard restaurant.

Northern Flicker

Black-capped chickadees were my favorite, constantly flitting black and white balls of feathers, hanging upside down, sideways, or upright, pecking at bark of our trees, finch feeder, and suet. These energetic bodies were the liveliest in our backyard menagerie, always in a small flock of about 20 birds, arriving in our large ponderosa pine tree at the same time each afternoon, then gone 20 minutes later. But there were a few stragglers that came early and stayed later.  What could be more cheerful than the song of chickadees? “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee!” But that flock had me curious. Why come the same time each day? Did they have a home range that they covered in the same order each day? And why were they in a flock? Safety in numbers? They certainly made a ruckus when I went out on the deck and they were nearby. Perhaps warning others?

Chickadee

Black-billed magpies were our largest backyard inhabitants, beauties in glossy black and white feathers, and beaks that looked like they could hammer through concrete. A group of about six magpies took turns at our suet feeder first thing in the morning, and again in late afternoon. No other birds challenged the position of the magpies, they were aware that when magpies were feeding, all bets were off. The suet feeder was close enough to the kitchen window and the birds so large that we could identify individuals by specific features such as slight differences in their beaks and feather coloring.

Magpie beaks awakened us at dawn on several mornings when our very small window feeder, usually used by towhees, was being robbed by magpies fluttering in the air and doing their best to hammer away at the suet cups within. One day, they even managed to abscond with two suet cups made specifically for spaces in the feeder. We were curious how magpies could eat so much, sometimes a half a block of suet in one sitting—literally eating us out of house and home! We thought these birds were so well-nourished, that they would lay an extraordinary number of eggs this spring and have the healthiest chicks.

In addition to scrub jays, downy woodpeckers, bushtits, mourning doves, red-breasted nuthatches, and the other birds mentioned, we also had two furry visitors come to our garden cafe on a regular basis. Squirrels liked it all, the finch food, millet, and suet. We purchased suet with hot pepper that squirrels will not eat. I guess our squirrels did not read the package that said, “Squirrel proof.” We knew they were a pair because they ate in totally different ways. At the suet feeder, one grabbed pieces of suet in a paw and shoved them into its mouth. The other bit off chunks, chewed, and swallowed. On the brick columns, one licked the millet with its tongue, the other shoveled the seeds in its mouth after picking up a paw full. So funny to watch! And then, one day when the feeder was empty, sat outside the window in this exact pose. Thanks to Facebook for this post!

Birds inspire us: “The early bird catches the worm.” “Free as a bird.” “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Emily Dickinson said it best:

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.”

Enjoy my You Tube Video of my backyard birds busy at their feeders. I would like to hear if you had a silver lining in your pandemic world. Please reply via email or press the “send comment” at the end of this blog. Thanks.