Recently I saw hummingbirds in the front and back yards. Oddly enough, the front yard sighting was in the main rose garden. I imagine the hummer was looking for tiny bugs, and I have plenty of beneficial bugs to choose from. I took in a John Paul II rose and found an assassin bug inside the bloom. He looked around as if to say, "Why was I riffed? I was doing my job."
I also saw a Monarch butterfly on the Butterfly Bush. He departed while I looked and came back when I walked away from the plant.
Today a finch fed on the platform, but many other offerings have been left alone and the normal bird chatter is absent. One reader blamed me for creating the Bird Paradise and making them unsettled, but that happened after the migration away.
Our Moline reader has the largest collection of birds she has had in 12 years.
And yet, our suet feeders are so neglected that they are melting into the soil instead of being eaten. Before they were swarmed by starlings and grackles all day.
We have plenty of seeds to eat, whether in or on the feeders, and plenty of natural seeds from coneflowers going to seed, sunflowers finishing, etc. Finches are great seed eaters and late to nest for that reason.
It is like being shunned in WELS. All of the sudden...I am all alone!
