Our suet ball is hanging outside the window nearest my computer, so I see a lot of our winter feathered friends as I work. Lately, there's been a huge yellow-shafted flicker visiting, but mostly, it's characters like nuthatches, chickadees, and the downy woodpecker you see below.
Our sunflower harvest was amazing this year. We cut off the sunflower heads and stored them in our garage, thinking we'd bring a new one out for the chickadees every so often... but the mice had other ideas. So we hung our sunflowers on our fence, and there were lots of squirrels and blue jays around for a while. They're too heavy to hang from the heads like the smaller birds do, so they picked seeds from around the edges, and our smaller feathered friends cleaned up the leftovers. The jays still come around now and then, hoping, I think, that we've set out a few more heads. They eye the suet ball, too, as does our squirrel, but it's hard for him to reach it. So he checks out the sunflower heads in case he missed anything.
