Abstract.

Red-breasted nuthatch at feeder outside UW office. Relatively
inexperienced birdwatcher thinks this is really cool. He also reports
house finches and black-capped chickadees, house finch disease, Bewick's
wren, exactly what kind of feeders he uses, and the location of his
feeders.

Details.

Outside my office on UW campus, in Seattle (Padelford Hall, window
facing eastern courtyard, about 40 feet up, tops of young pine trees
near window) I have the following two feeders:

- A small tube feeder (KWF window feeder) stuck to the outside, so that
it is about a metre from my face when I sit at my computer terminal. I
stock it with a mixture of black thistleseed and shelled sunflower seeds.
I can't use whole sunflower seed because they make a mess and the building
boss might order me to remove the feeders. The thistleseeds are mixed in
to make the mixture flow.

- A "cage" suet feeder: chunk of suet held inside a cage which starlings
are too big to get into, said cage suspended about a foot above the tube
feeder, hanging against the glass

Both feeders were purchased from the Seattle Audubon Society Nature Shop.

I am prompted to send this email because for the first time today I saw
a red-breasted nuthatch, Sitta canadensis, eating at the tube feeder.
No big deal, maybe, but I was thrilled. It reached in and got itself a
sunflower shell.

The birds that come to the feeders (all three species reported here) hang
onto the concrete wall corner with no apparent difficulty. The main
species are house finch, Carpodacus mexicanus, and black-capped chickadee,
Poecile atricapillus.

In 2000, spring, several of the house finches had obvious house finch
disease, to the extent that the feeder was more a source of "gross-out"
than joy. Now the disease is less obvious (they died off or got
better?), although as I write this an affected female is eating.

The chickadees often peck insistently at the plastic of the tube feeder
when the seeds are not readily available in the outlet (when they are
stuck up inside). They also peck noisily at the suet, like geologists on
a rock. Their pecking creates a "thump thump" when the suet cage vibrates
against my window. I assume that the chickadees peck the plastic hopper
because they are used to pecking trunks of trees, where the pecking could
actually loosen the bark and uncover bugs (??). Pecking the plastic
hopper seems a waste of the chickadee's time and energy.

I have seen no bushtits, Psaltriparus minimus, at the suet feeder. My
parents have the same kind of suet feeder in Eugene, Oregon, on the other
hand, and in December I saw a dozen bushtits mobbing it.

Recently in the Quad, SE corner, I've seen what I believe is a Bewick's
Wren, Thryomanes bewickii. It is in the bushes, low, twitting around.

Jake

Jacob A. Wegelin
Department of Statistics
University of Washington
B-313 Padelford
Box 354322
Seattle WA 98195
wegelin at stat.washington.edu
http://www.stat.washington.edu/wegelin/