[obol] odd birds

[sandyleapt at comcast.net]

A few years ago, when I still had feeders in the garden, the resident Flickers developed a taste for peanuts.  A co -worker of mine could not believe the Flickers were eating peanuts until I finally got a picture.  I think they learned to eat peanuts from watching the Scrub and Stellar's Jays.   I put out peanuts in the shell and the Flickers were openning up the peanut shell to get to the nuts inside.  The local starlings learned to open peanuts too.

Sandy
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Bobbett Pierce" <ensatina3 at hotmail.com>
> This is my observation on one of the species Dan talked about: Flickers have 
> dumped sunflower seed out of my feeders for years and would gulp down 
> something every few minutes.  I had assumed they were looking for insects of 
> some sort, but studied the activity closely to see if I could tell what it 
> was they were actually finding.  Thru binocs, I could see they were picking 
> out sunflower seeds with no hulls, a few of which are always in a batch of 
> regular seed.  I started buying hullless seed and adding some to the whole 
> seed.  The dumping slowed considerably because they were finding more to 
> eat.  Previously they would throw a half-gallon of seed on the ground in a 
> short time in their quest for hullless seeds (I have a big tube feeder).  
> Flickers still dump seed, but the amount tossed aside now is tolerable.  I 
> do it year around -- a pair comes daily right now.  I don't put out a feeder 
> with only hulless seed for the flickers because it costs too much and it 
> would disappear in minutes -- it's popular with so many species.  Little 
> birds get it in winter only, in one small feeder.   Lona Pierce, Warren
> 
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From: "Bobbett Pierce" <ensatina3 at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [obol] odd birds
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 16:08:38 +0000
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