I Have Saved All My Ribbons for Thee

I'm in charge of feeding the critters with whom we share the neighborhood. We buy about twenty pounds of unsalted peanuts every month for the squirrels (and blue jays and starlings). The birds take them in their beaks, one at a time though I have watched blue jays slide one peanut down their gullet and then grab a second one, I'm guessing as a mid-flight snack. 

The squirrels take two, every time and are of a size that you'd assume (correctly) can only be the result of someone feeding them as their down-the-street cousins who live wild and free look emaciated by comparison. 

I also stock our bird feeders-we used to have wooden feeders that looked like little houses. That, I concede was more for us than for the sparrows and woodpeckers who could care less. And ironically, they weren't all that fond of those feeders so I went out and got vertical cylinders with very small feeding holes behind a wire cage to (I hoped) discourage the grackles who know a free lunch when they see it and who'd bully the little birds off the feeders.  

The 'new feeders' are wildly successful. I estimate at one point we were going through forty pounds of birdseed a week and by 'we' I mean the birds as my job was to be their butler. I've decided to only fill the feeders on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I've also decided against telling the birds about the new schedule. 

They eat every single seed in the feeders and then hang on them perhaps confusing cause and effect in terms of precipitating a refill. When I do fill the feeders, dozens, if not hundreds of sparrows sit on the overhead utility line and on our neighbor's garage roof, watching very intently. There's more skill than I ever appreciated in being able to perch on a wire and not just a little danger, too.  

They are very patient, waiting until I'm practically back in the house after restocking the feeders before descending on them as if they hadn't eaten anything at anytime in their lives before. It's not quite Hitchcockian, but I will admit, I do keep a sharp eye out as I head back indoors.
-bill kenny