Backyard Bullies

I have a bird feeder hanging in my back yard. I can sit inside my screen porch(lanai in Florida speak) and watch the birds as they feed on the sunflower seeds I provide them. When I first hung the feeder, the only way I could attract birds to it was to sprinkle some on the ground around it. A few mourning doves and house sparrows came daily, with the sparrows eventually seeing the seed in the feeder. I was surprised that the squirrels I saw along the neighbors' fences didn't approach. I guess they were just keeping their distance until I  showed that I would keep the feeder filled.

Now I must tell you that here in my neighborhood there are very few hardwood trees. I can see a tall one, oak or maple maybe, a couple of yards away and I know there is another in the yard farther down the street, but most of the trees in the neighborhood are palms of various types. I don't think palms are the home of choice for squirrels, so I am not surprised there are very few squirrels here compared to the many that live in my old Virginia Beach neighborhood.

Even so, I chose a bird feeder that is a tall rectangular prism with a cage around it that is spring loaded to come down when big birds or a squirrel lands on it. It has closed up when more than 8 house sparrows (LBBs-little brown birds) tried to cling on it.

Well, I have one pretty smart squirrel that comes to my feeder. He has figured out how to hang precariously on my feeder without the cage coming down. Unlike the feeder above, I bought mine at home depot and paid less for it. Mine looks almost the same, except there is a bottom similar to the top that the squirrel gets one foot wrapped around. I think he uses the other one to kind of prop up the cage.Because he is busy balancing there, he tends to be messy and drops seed on the ground below. This is one reason I allow him to stay and eat. The seed he drops goes to the mourning doves who are not built for a hanging perch style feeder. The LBBs do not seem to be fighting for feeder time with the squirrel, either, because they come earlier in the morning.

So who are the backyard bullies in the title of this post? The big pigeons who have found my yard occupy the ground more than the smaller doves, but I have seen them out there eating at the same time. No, the bullies are a pair of mockingbirds who have recently decided to dive bomb the feeder when the LBBs are on it as well as the squirrel. They even tried fussing at some pigeons on the ground, but the pigeons, I swear, looked at the much smaller mockingbirds and said, "Yeah, right!"

I did not think mockingbirds liked sunflower seeds, so it seems like they just want to push some other birds around. Sounds like the definition of a bully to me.

My backyard is one of my favorite places to hang out here in Florida(not too sunny today),  especially because of the visitors who put on a show for me.