Sunday, May 18, 2008

Airforce Redux

So, at home in Seattle, squirrels would occasionally empty the birdfeeders. One would get clever, figure out some branch to bypass the elaborate squirrel defenses, and boom empty feeder. On type of squirrel was more insidious. For a while we had flying squirrels, who, being airborn just glided to the feeders at night. These were referred to as the "airforce."

Here in Miami, I have a nice little tube feeder in the backyard, protected by a squirrel dome. Squirrels cannot defeat the dome, I have watched them try. So I was a little perplexed when after filling the feeder yesterday morning, it was almost half empty this afternoon. I chocked it up to blue jays (and they are quite active right now, getting ready for nesting), but while there are a lot, it just didn't seem like they or the cardinals could be the ones emptying the feeder. Enter Russell's nemesis.

Miami has large colonies of wild parrots (can you see where this is headed). They are gregarious and loud. A colony roosts outside Russell's office at work and drives him nuts. I have threatened for two years to set up a parrot feeding station, but mostly in jest. This afternoon I was getting set up in the backyard to sit out and read and glanced up....there are two little green parrots (I believe they are technically white winged parakeets) at the feeder....they took off. Half an hour later they are back...The parrots are the new airforce, and will have that feeder empty by the end of tomorrow at the rate they are eating....

1 comment:

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