[TN-Bird] feeder birds - Knox County

west Knox County, Tennessee.  Along with everyone else hereabouts I've been 
inundated with Pine Siskins this winter.  This past weekend I had 20-30 at 
least.  I had taken down my wire mesh niger feeder to clean it a couple days 
ago and had bought a cheap plastic feeder with 8 perches to put up in its 
place.  Now I gave up on plastic feeders several years ago when the squirrels 
ate mine (ok, maybe they didn't swallow) but I didn't want to spend a lot of 
money on a feeder I may not use again after this winter and I figured maybe 
squirrels don't like niger.  
 
Sunday with the snow there was so much activity in the yard that I hung the now 
clean wire feeder in the thicket in addition to the new plastic one and two 
thistle socks I've had up for a few weeks.  It took the siskins no time to 
locate their favorite feeder but when I looked out a little later I had a big 
surprise.  A male Red-Winged Blackbird was clinging to the wire and eating 
niger.  The Red-wing was surprising enough.  I seldom get any in the yard and 
Sunday there were 4 males.  But I was really surprised to see him eating 
thistle.
 
As for finches, I've noticed that I have fewer House Finches than normal.  In 
fact I've only been seeing two lately, a male and a female, whereas past 
winters I've had 3 to 4 times that many.  The number of goldfinches seems about 
the same, about half a dozen.  Other birds scarce this winter are chickadees 
and titmice.  Don't know if it has anything to do with the siskin invasion or 
not.  Would make more sense for the number of goldfinches to be down if 
anything.  I never had great numbers of chickadees and titmice but I always had 
some.  I didn't see a single titmouse or chickadee this past weekend though I 
did hear a chickadee.
 
Carole Gobert, Knoxville, TN 

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