Big and Little Ground Feeders

Not very much goes to waste in the natural world.  Many folks think buzzards are gross because they eat dead things on the road.  So do crows.  Eagles eat dead things too, usually on the beach or farther away from people.  This is a very efficient way to dispose of carrion.  It feeds a lot of birds and does a cleanup job at the same time.   One opinion about why buzzards (turkey vultures, really) have no feathers on their heads is because of the need for them to stick their heads into carcasses.  Those head feathers would be really smelly after awhile.  Who knows if this is the reason?  Ravens and crows do the same thing and they manage to clean themselves in some way.

Every day, under the feeders in my yard, I see ground feeders doing a cleanup job.  Red and black towhees, juncoes with their dark hoods, sparrows and thrushes can be seen searching through the grass for fallen seed.  Towhees have this great way of grasping with their feet then hopping backward to reveal whatever might be under that patch of turf.  Hermit thrushes are much more careful, skulking just at the edge of the short grass, ready to quickly disappear into the heathers if a human is spotted, even fifty feet away.  They are shy guys.  What I usually see is the cinnamon-colored tail just fading into the shadows as I enter the sideyard.   Fallen seed attracts bugs and slugs, and they get eaten too, of course.  The robins cruise through a few times every day to see what might be crawling around.   Sparrows are notorious ground feeders- one lucky day I had five different kind of sparrow feeding under the shore pine.   Some birders will 'seed' an area in order to attract sparrows.  There's a spot in NW Oregon that is well known where seed is tossed and sparrows watched.  I guess you could say that I do that too.

If you feed ground feeding birds, here are some ideas:   open areas are a good thing so that the neighborhood kitty can't sneak right up on the birds.  Tree cover is good, in order to shelter the birds from airborne predators like Coopers hawks.  These hawks are so fast and agile- they'll almost turn right angles at jet speed in  pursuit of a panicked sparrow.   It should be an area that you aren't overly concerned about from a landscaping point of view.  After awhile, especially in a wetter climate, bare spots will appear where the birds have been digging around.  We have several mallard hens (more ground feeders!) with almost grown youngsters that pick around under some of the feeders.  They actually rest on their bellies and have a nice long dig right in front of them, murmuring softly when the human relents and tosses more cracked corn for them.  Two are waddling up from the water as I type.

If you watch songbirds in your yard, you will notice that they 'stage' in a nearby tree or shrub, then fly out to exposed areas for food, then fly back to cover.  If you put a water feature in, it's better if it's up off the ground like a pedestal bird bath- more protected from ground predators.  

Just now the spotted towhee is scavenging, his brilliant brick red and deepest black feathers soaking up the sun, his ruby eye watching me.