Hi, Tweeters,

Late last week my feeder birds vanished. ALL of my house finches, pine
siskins, even the stellar's jays...stopped coming to my feeders. The only
birds who stuck around were the juncos, and of course the pigs with wings, the
mourning doves.

I wondered, salmonella? No, I keep my feeders clean, the ground underneath
it, too.
Was my feed bad? Moldy? It looked okay. Predators? I have a healthy helping of
merlins, kestrels, harriers..but they've always been here, too.

At the same time the entire Puget Sound region was being battered by high
winds, rain, sideways at time, heavy most of the time, hail, etc. The
newspapers were telling us how bad it was going to be, and down here south of
Olympia, it was.
My feeders were sideways more often than not. No problem, though, as the feed
was nowhere in them, nor were my birds.

Well well well..yesterday dawned, still windy and rainy.....but my birds are
back. All of them, plus a few purple finches that blew in from somewhere.
Lucky me, as I started the backyard bird survey yesterday. I was worried that
my data sheets would show mourning doves and juncos. Oh wow, really exotic
stuff...

Has anyone else seen such a reaction? Did my birds decide to hunker down in
cover for a week?? (there's not much cover around my feeders, being that I
live on prairie.....). Am I the only one who had their birds vanish for a
week, or is this common reaction to bad weather?? I've been feeding birds for
years and years, never saw this sort of reaction before..
Michelle