Thursday, May 10, 2007

Night time bandit visits the Aerie

I mentioned seeing red squirrels, gray squirrels and chipmunks in the back yard and on the deck. Last night (Wednesday) we had our first official visit by at least one raccoon. He came up on the deck and emptied the two tray feeders, knocking on onto the deck, and also knocked the stick feeder to the ground. He also took the plastic hanging bird feeder off the pole across the yard and emptied it. All these feeders contained sunflower seeds that are high in oil. I watched him trying to get the seeds out from under the tray he knocked onto the deck when I checked out the noise last night and then saw he had succeeded in turning it over when I came down this morning.

Actually, this may have been his second visit. Terry mentioned that the plastic hanging feeder was on the ground on Wednesday morning.

Tonight was his third. Shadow got very excited about something out on the deck shortly after dark. When I flicked on the outside lights, there he was again, ambling along like he was visiting the boardwalk on a July Sunday afternoon. Al least he hasn’t raided the food left in the feeder tonight—yet. If this becomes a habit, I’ll have to pull the feeders in at night and put them out again in the morning. I won’t like that and the birds who have gotten used to their daybreak meal won’t like it either.

No comments: