On a cold, gray, rainy day, all the usual small birds were pretty active around the front yard feeders \u2013 Chickadees, Titmice, a pair of House Finches, Downy Woodpecker, Brown-headed Nuthatches, Mockingbird, Red-bellied Woodpecker. One Yellow-rumped Warbler made several visits to one of the feeders, which is a little unusual. Cardinals, Dark-eyed Juncos, White-throated Sparrows and Mourning Doves fed on the ground. <\/p>\n
One strange thing happened. I was inside, stopping to look out a large window on the second floor, and saw a gray squirrel at the base of a tree-trunk jumping around in a strange way, sort of like a cat playing with a mouse, but more clumsily. Suddenly a small bird streaked out, flying away from the squirrel and the squirrel ran after it. Both disappeared from view, and when I went downstairs to see if I could find them, I could not. I did not see what kind of bird it was, but when it flew, it looked like it got away.<\/p>\n
It all happened very fast and was over quickly, but it certainly looked as if the squirrel was either trying to catch a bird or they were squabbling over something. After doing a very little research, I learned that squirrels are known to eat small birds sometimes \u2013 something I had never known. We have a lot of squirrels here, way too many \u2013 in part because we live in an old pecan grove and also have a lot of oaks. So far we\u2019ve managed to prevent them from getting to the bird feeders (except for a new peanut-butter feeder out back \u2013 they\u2019ve just figured that one out), but there are always several squirrels around. They\u2019re a nuisance in many ways and I’m sure they compete with birds on the ground for fallen nuts, seeds and fruit from the feeders. But I assume eating birds is not something they do regularly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a cold, gray, rainy day, all the usual small birds were pretty active around the front yard feeders \u2013 Chickadees, Titmice, a pair of House Finches, Downy Woodpecker, Brown-headed Nuthatches, Mockingbird, Red-bellied Woodpecker. One Yellow-rumped Warbler made several visits to one of the feeders, which is a little unusual. Cardinals, Dark-eyed Juncos, White-throated Sparrows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}