Birds on the feeder

Sitting out in the sunshine this weekend, trying to get pictures of birds for Deana. She posts such pretty ones and asked me to show what was in my back yard.

Well, this area of the desert doesn’t have any pretty colored birds. There are some finches with pale red breasts, or dull yellow, but most birds here are either dull gray or brown. Nothing as dramatic as on the east coast. We have a feeder out back, hanging from the peach tree. I just have a little digital camera with a small zoom capability, so these are fairly fuzzy. But here is what usually comes to our feeder.


They sit over the wall on the tips of the neighbor’s plants and wait for an opportunity.


Usually there are twenty or thirty around, all taking turns pushing each other off of the feeder perches and grabbing a few bites before being shoved off in turn. The sit on the bushes or atop the wall or hold onto the bark of the peach and fly at the ones eating, chirping all the while.

Usually some pigeons and doves also show up, to walk around underneath and pick up what falls. They used to sit on the feeder and clean it out in under ten minutes, but then I cut the lip off the feeder so the perches are now too small for the bigger birds.

This is the section of wall where we put up a wooden decoration. It’s done now, just needs some black touchup paint on the screw heads.


Buster doesn’t bother the small birds, the pigeons only fly away when he walks too close. Max runs over and chases them off, but Buster doesn’t care.