I’m not sure exactly why, but yesterday was a huge eating festival for the birds. Early in the day, it was all the little birds. Chickadees, Tufted Titmouses, Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, and European Sparrows. One bird would come, grab a seed, fly away and two more birds would show up just seconds later.
I refilled the flat feeder three times because we also had two red squirrels who each ate pretty much the entire contents of the feeder. In other words, each squirrel ate a full flat feeder of black sunflower and other seeds. These squirrel are small, but they sure are hungry!
As the day got towards late afternoon, the doves showed up. Owen counted them. At one point we had more than 20 of them in feeders and on the deck. All of them were eating the little white seeds the other birds don’t like, but which the doves love. They do a pretty good deck cleanup, too.
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Categories: #Birds, #gallery, #Photography, #Squirrel, Anecdote, Cardinal, Wildlife, Woodpeckers
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
I think the doves are the sweetest birds. They look really thankful.
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They are very sweet and totally non-threatening. Aside from their bulk, they are truly non-aggressive. We have a lot of them. Usually you have two, maybe three show up, but recently we’ve been getting whole flocks. The picture really show about half of them, but since I don’t have a big window to shoot through, there’s a limit to how wide I can go from the inside.
I think they are also quite pretty. Not flashy, but nice warm colors. I could decorate a house using the colors on the back of a Mourning Dove.
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Is there such a thing as a gray cardinal? The first bird looks like one, but I thought they were always red. Duh.
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That’s a Tufted Titmouse. They both have crest, but only the cardinal — the male cardinal — is entirely red. And they are REALLY red, from beak to toenail. The redder they are, the more the girls like them.
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We get cardinals here every once in a while. They are touted as messengers from beyond and when my good friend died and I was talking to his wife long-distance, one came and rested on my hummingbird feeder the entire time we talked, then flew away when I hung up. Only one I’ve seen in years. My friend said one perched on a tree over where they spread his ashes in Alabama as the held his memorial as well. I know. Unbelievable.
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I’ve heard that told feature owls — Celtic birds of warning and woe — but cardinals are different. Why not? That brilliant red makes him a “wake-up” bird. He gets attention wherever he goes. I love them in winter against the white of snow. You never miss a visiting cardinal.
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