Success at Last

Finally the birds have come to to bird feeder.

I was nearly convinced that my bird feeder effort was futile. Finally, after 17 days of nothing, birds began to come and feed and they have been coming in bunches. It is nice to watch them.

One of the other things I did was to change the bird food. I started out with a mixture of wild bird food consisting of various seeds. Then, I put sunflower pieces in the feeder. It is clear that the finches prefer the sunflower pieces to the wild bird food mixture. The finches also love thistle seed.

I am convinced that, first, it takes time for the birds to develop an interest or awareness of the bird feeder and second, the change of food was also important in attracting them.

So far we have had house finches, yellow finches (the middle photo) and cardinals come to eat at the bird feeder. The the male house finch (the top photo) has a little red around his head and neck. The female is entirely gray. The male cardinal (the bottom photo) is a bright red and the female is more the color of the wings of the male, much more gray in color.

Here is what each of our visitors look like.