Woods Wanderer

Now on the backside of a winter snowstorm, the temps are falling rapidly. Soon they’ll be in the single digits, then below zero for days on end. Those kind of temps make it hard for birds to survive. They need high-energy food to do so. With that in mind, I shelled out a little extra cash this morning for bird food that’s rich in black sunflower seeds to replenish my feeder. That and the suet will go a long way. There’s one problem, though. The grey squirrels in our heavily wooded neighborhood will empty the feeder in a matter of hours. Once again.

There’s a bunch of fat squirrels that have become emboldened lately by my old dog Matika’s inability to give chase the way she has in the past. I call them the Gang of Four, led by one particularly corpulent yet acrobatic rodent who has been known to hang out at the feeder all day. Literally. A week ago, my wife and I decided that enough’s enough. We ordered a handy device appropriately called a squirrel baffle, which is simply a conical piece of sheet metal that can be affixed to the bird feeder pole. It came via UPS a couple days ago. Today I affixed it to the pole.

Is it wrong to anticipate the squirrel’s frustration as eagerly as I do? Does that make me a bad person? While refilling the feeder, I threw a little seed on the ground to assuage a creeping sense of guilt. That’s for both the mourning doves and the squirrels, I told myself. The squirrels being what they are, though, the doves won’t get much of it.

A strong wind blows the baffle around, along with the feeder and suet. Once the wind subsides, the birds will return: woodpeckers, flickers, nuthatches and chickadees. I look forward to that. But, I must admit, I’m even more exited about the Gang of Four to showing up again. That should be quite entertaining.

Tags: bird feeder, songbirds, squirrel baffle, squirrels, survival of the fittest, winter