![\"House](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/sparrow.jpg\" "\\"sparrow\\"")
The two small birds on the left are house sparrows.\u00a0 Whenever I fill the bird feeder pigeons, house finches, and quail come to visit, but every now and then a\u00a0sparrow joins the crowd.\u00a0 The\u00a0sparrows seem to prefer\u00a0seed\u00a0on the ground to seed in the feeder.\u00a0 Also in the photo: a quail, two mourning doves, and\u00a0several house finches.<\/p>\n Above the feeder, on the branch to the left, is a cardinal.\u00a0 I couldn’t get close enough with my little camera to pick up the colors, but this one has only a little red, on its head and wings, which would make it a female (the males are almost entirely red).\u00a0 You can see more house finches on the branches and in the feeder.<\/p>\n A male Gila Woodpecker and a thrasher were also here today, but\u00a0wouldn’t hold\u00a0still long enough for photos.<\/p>\n About those mourning doves.\u00a0 Doves are pigeons.\u00a0 I know this because I recently read Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird<\/a>.\u00a0 I gained a new level of respect for pigeons in general, but still don’t much like them in person.\u00a0 If I didn’t have a pigeon-proof bird feeder, there wouldn’t be a single seed left for anyone else.\u00a0 So they sit on top of the feeder and shit\u00a0on it.\u00a0\u00a0Ditto up under the eaves of my roof, where they occasionally also build nests (which they also shit in).\u00a0 Granted, they’re fascinating, remarkable birds, and they’ve been carrying messages for mankind since caveman days, but they’re still rats with wings.<\/p>\n So how does a pigeon-proof bird feeder work?\u00a0 If you look at the photo, it’s a globe.\u00a0 The access holes are on the bottom of the globe.\u00a0 Little birds can fly right inside and eat.\u00a0 Larger birds, like\u00a0woodpeckers and thrashers, can cling to the bottom rim of an access hole with their feet\u00a0and lean forward to eat.\u00a0 Pigeons can’t bend that way.\u00a0 All they can do is sit on top of the globe and look at the food down at the bottom.\u00a0 And shit in pure frustration.<\/p>\n Previous entries in this thread: <\/em>here<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The limitations of\u00a0our little digital camera are becoming apparent.\u00a0\u00a0We need more megapixels, more telephoto, more cowbell! But I did catch two of\u00a0our more elusive visitors today. The two small birds on the left are house sparrows.\u00a0 Whenever I fill the bird feeder pigeons, house finches, and quail come to visit, but every now and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cardinal\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/cardinal.jpg\" "\\"cardinal\\"")