Backyard nature: Bird feeder mania!

by David Cohen

There must be something going around. At the end of my last Forest Hills Connection post, “Backyard nature: Winter is for the birds,” I mentioned our first bird feeder and the birds it was drawing. Then Marlene Berlin posted her marvelous account of her new backyard bird feeder. Sense a trend? Count this as extending it.

I hung first a squirrel-proof dispenser of nuts, seeds, and fruit, and then a suet feeder, both from the Audubon Naturalist Society shop at Woodland (8940 Jones Mill Road, Chevy Chase, MD 20815). (I’m waiting for summer to hang the hummingbird feeder my wife Ruth gave me.)

Food brought the birds flocking! These photos come from our backyard and the trees around it:

A blue jay. (All photos © David Cohen, davidcohenphotodc.com)

A female northern cardinal.

A red-bellied woodpecker.

A pileated woodpecker.

A tufted titmouse.

A male northern cardinal.

A Carolina wren.

An American robin.

Permit me to warn you: Feeders bring birds. Birds offer endless entertainment – and distraction!