Mom's House February 22, 2008

Mom’s House February 22, 2008
For as long as I can remember my mom has been putting out bird feeders during the winter months. This year my sister bought her one that blocks the larger birds from getting to the seeds and allows only the smaller birds to feed. This helps the little guys eat and keeps them from getting chased away by the larger birds. She’s been bugging me since Christmas time to come over and take some pictures of “Her” birds. Well finally this week I knew that I would have the time and that there would be snow on the ground so that would almost force the little guys to use her feeder. I really didn’t mind heading to her house for several reasons: chance to see mom; got to sleep in instead of waking very early and driving in the dark for an hour or so; chance to play with mom’s dog; could go inside of the house and get warm whenever I wanted.

She has the bird feeder set up outside the living room door of her house which is actually on the second floor. This allowed me to set up my equipment at the corner of the house and to be partially blocked from the birds view. I knew that I would spook them if I was too far in the open and they wouldn’t use the feeder. The distance from the feeder to the objective lens of my scope was approximately 14 yards. Being at such a short distance would give me the chance for some great shots on these little birds.



Once I was all set up and the birds accepted my presence I was treated to a steady relay of Black Capped Chickadees and Tufted Titmouse. It was a treat this morning watching these little guys fly into the feeder. They were using the lilac bush and the evergreen trees for staging areas. They’d zip from the staging tress, go in for a quick bite then wait their turn again in the staging areas. I counted 5 different Titmouse and 7 different Chickdees