Setting up a backyard buffet for birds

We've reworked our feeder setup again, taking down the now out-of-season hummingbird feeder, and hanging two new tube feeders, one for more sunflower seeds, the other for suet kibbles.

When we moved to this house 22 years ago we hung four tube feeders from a feeder tree made of plumbing pipe. It worked, and it was squirrel-proof.

It was at the far end of the backyard, though, out in our wilderness (trees, bushes, swamp and pond edges). To see the birds well, binoculars were required.

Seed was kept in small garbage cans in our walkout basement. Going to the basement, loading a pail with seed, tromping through snow in season, well, it became a bit of a chore. I am not getting younger.

The walkout feature gives us a deck on what is, in the rear of the house, the second level, our living level.

The feeders now hang from shepherd poles fastened to the deck rail. Seed is kept out there in an old chest cooler. Squirrels are trying to gnaw their way in. I think they smell the seed, so I am smearing lid edges with peppermint oil to mask the scent. We will see.

Suet is offered in holes drilled in two 6-foot-long heavy branches stacked against the rail.

We've settled on 1.5-inch blue masking tape in strips 1 to 3 feet long, four to six strips per window. We are not aesthetically prepared for a Home & Gardens house-of-the-month feature, but the birds are safer.

Light through the glass doors illuminates our dining room and an area convenient to the kitchen where we have two chairs, a small table, and a settee on which I can stretch out to read or watch birds.

This is where we unfold our paper version of the StarTrib and have breakfast, birds sharing our morning, or the other way round.

In mid-October we had visits from a purple finch, previewing a good finch winter, hopefully, and a hermit thrush, a rare sighting here, particularly on our deck. Perhaps it saw the bird bath there (heated for winter use).

We sprinkle sparrow seed (millet, thistle, sunflowers crumbs) on the deck for birds that often forage on the ground — white-throated sparrows and juncoes this fall.

The birds are eager visitors in the morning. At a point, all at once, they disappear. I wonder who gives the time-to-go signal?

The birds drift back in an hour or so or more. Feeding bouts through the day are less group events than the early one. Cardinals close the store.

We've always fed birds, never tiring of the same ones, always hoping for a visitor like the thrush — or the Bullock's oriole that took some pokes at an orange half last summer.

Where did it come from? Where did it go? What will we see next?

Lifelong birder Jim Williams can be reached at woodduck38@gmail.com.