Yesterday was a day to “find” misplaced things, you know, right in plain view but forgotten things!
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Dougy was pleased I “found” his tub under the TV stand. I need to clean up some other things he likes that are still there.
I was pleased I found this old photo of me hand feeding a pine siskin. I took it sometime back in the 1980s on a bitterly cold February day (-14°F / -26°C). Yes, I remember that temperature! Curiously, yesterday, another February day years later, it got up to 63°F / 17°C!
I learned how to hand feed birds by watching Woody the grey tabby cat, my neighbors kitty, stalk birds at the feeders. You stop a safe distance away from the birds, wait without moving. Then you move forward a step or two and wait without moving till the spooked birds return. You repeat this till you are right up on the birds on the feeder.
(Keep in mind, my hand was filled with shelled sunflower seeds, and was extended just like in the photo. The camera is in the other hand, pre-focused, at the right aperture, and ready to shoot.)
Once the birds are comfortable you are just a strange harmless feeder, they hop onto your hand and defend the seeds from each other. I’ve had up to five pine siskins on my hand at a time, with another hanging on the frame of my glasses, and another perched on my head. It’s hard not to laugh!
My thumb is approximately the same size as a pine siskin. I’ve wiggled it at a pine siskin and the bird attacked it, extending its wings to expose the yellow stripe and under wing feathers and making squawky sounds to drive off the interloper! Quite brave!
One winter I tool care of my parents place the chickadees decided I was trustworthy and would perch on me and eat. They were sassy little guys and would scold from the porch rail if the seed got low. By the way, things go missing in my place too, small as it is,
Chickadees are fun to watch and interact with, too! If you imitate their chatter to each other, they will chatter back.
Indeed they do. And they like to scold!
LOL! And how!
It’s great fun, isn’t it!? My place isn’t especially large, either, but it is full of stuff I periodically sort through for items to take to the church rummage sale.
That’s a wonderful photo of you and the siskin, Doug! Too bad you don’t have footage of the siskin’s response to you wiggling your thumb!
Yeah! I couldn’t afford a video camera that far back, and they were huge as I recall. Nothing like the video capabilities of simple point-and-shot cameras today!
Amazing photo! Somewhere – probably in my slide deck – I have a 70s vintage picture of me at Bok Tower / Gardens in Florida with a squirrel sittting on my knee eating chips. It cool when that happens.
Of course now I am a “cat tree”.
I have to agree! Your kitties are more inclined to perch on you than mine, though Andy tolerates being held much more now that he gets medicine daily in a process where I hold and calm him before and after. Ass I recall, my first contact with you was when you put up your cat beard photos, which still make me smile!
They must feel so weightless on your hand.
The sensation mostly is light claw pressure from the nails on their feet. You are right about how light they feel.
– 26 degrees C… I believe I would not survive… can’t even imagine how cold that would feel. Brrrrr!
Awful! Absolutely awful! Your exposed flesh aches in that cold.
Yikes!
I’m enjoying the warmish spring-like weather we’re having this week.
Here it feels more like summer is around the corner.
It’s been Spring-like weather the pat few days. On the other hand, I can remember lots of snowstorms and blizzards on my birthday in late March.
In the Netherlands we sometimes had snow in April.
The latest/earliest I’ve seen snow in Western Nebraska was the time snow fell on July 4th, though it melted before it landed.
Remember this one?
Wow, that was something else entirely!
They only good thing about it is the snow doesn’t last or (typically) get too deep.
Last summer I had a butterfly land on my hand and it stayed there for a long time
Cool! I was walking across a huge parking lot at work one sweltering summer day, sweating profusely. A tiger swallowtail butterfly landed on my glasses and sipped seat from my brow. It’s a really interesting feeling, isn’t it?!
What a lovely way to feed birds.
It is addicting once you try and succeed!
doodz…how kewl yur dad waz abe bull ta get thiz burd two eat frum hiz hand !! 🙂 ♥♥
Anyone can do it…using the simple cat-taught method I used! Mostly it is a matter of patience and being very still between steps.
That sounds lovely.
It is a humbling experience on one hand, and exhilarating on the other.
I get that.
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Your comment about Dougy and my symbiotic relationship on brushing got zapped by WordPress because it was “spam”. Can’t imagine what triggered that because it was a simple, straight forward comment that look pretty innocuous to me! Any way, I replied to ytou comment on someone else’s comment but noted it was for “Susan P”, of course! Go to Post 1307 and look for the comment after my response to lorrs33.
Askimet has had a little trouble lately with plunking innocuous comments into SPAM. It has happened to me on other sites, and I have pulled some people out of my SPAM filter as well. I opened a trouble ticket on it but have not heard anything back yet.
Maddening! Though I’m happy not to get spam, I look at the messages that get called spam that are regular comments from readers, and I can’t imagine what triggered the spam response.
Cool photo of you holding the bird. I know people that do that with chickadees, but I have never been patient enough .
Oddly though chickadees came around on the hanging feeder that was inches away from my extended hand, none ever hopped onto my hand. I did have a brief visit by an America goldfinch. From what I read, many people find hand-feeding chickadees easy. I’d be delighted to have them stop by!
One of my aunts was good at hand feeding chickadees.
It’s worth the try!
I was down in Washington State a few years ago visiting a friend.We had stopped in a park for a break.Some friendly Grey Jays fluttered around me.I fed a few in the same manner.A park ranger saw me doing that & was going to give me a huge fine! I couldn’t believe it!
That’s a curious response. I guess the presumption of the apparent law is that they would become dependent on human hand outs, hardly a problem comparable to or as dangerous as humans feeding bears in Yellowstone National Park. It would seem they were already acclimated to human contact before you came along! There are similar restriction in Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota to feeding prairie dogs, but there always is the risk of bubonic plague or other rodent-to-human diseases there, something I don’t think is a risk feeding birds.
The bird whisperer! I knew there was a reason I liked you – you talk to our inner anipals. <3 XOXO – Bacon
I have a long history of being bitten by animals, going back to when I was a toddler trying to pet a brown bear in a zoo, an event that gave me a tiny but great scar between my middle and fourth fingers on my right hand. I also can claim bites by dog, cat, rabbit, horse, squirrel, parakeet, and rhesus monkeys (two different time, around the same age and at same zoo as the bear….). I still hate the hell out of monkeys (foul, nasty animals!), but all the others I still like.
Oh my goodness – all at the same zoo?! That has to be some kind of record you think? Honestly, I wouldn’t bite you. Maybe nibble but not bite. Snorts and oinks! XOXO – Bacon
No, just the brown bear and nasty monkeys were in the zoo. The rest were a variety of places. The one that hurt the most was the horse. (I would expect you to be very polite and nonaggressive, Bacon!)
Of course I would – mommy raised a southern boy – snorts with piggy laughter. XOXO – Bacon
That explains the polite manners!
That’s an awesome photo! As for misplaced things We have quite a few of those back home
I need an archeologist to help me find mine!
That would be a great experience to have!
It is!