"Eats like a bird"

or "Eating me out of house and home." Either title would work for this post.

I have a total of 7 bird feeders up right now:

sunflower, 6 ports
wild bird mix, 10 ports
safflower, 4 ports
sunflower & wild bird mix globe-type, 4 ports
suet feeder
mealworm tray
hummingbird feeder

Hummingbird feeder aside, the other 6 are receiving non-stop traffic from the seed- and insect-eaters. I thought it was bad this winter when the finches would drain their tube of finch blend in under 24 hours and the finch feeder would go just as fast. My evening routine would be to bring up the horses for dinner, feed the cats, fill the feeders, turn the horses back out. Luckily I hung the feeders close enough to the barn that I could find them in the dark.

Now there is no rhyme or reason to the rate which the ungrateful leaches drain their feeders. Sometimes they sit barely pick-ed at for a day or two, and then the whole thing will be gone in 12 hours. I may refill the meal worm tray and watch the bluebirds immediately swoop in and begin making laps back and forth from the next box, or it may sit idle for two days. I could go days without seeing a woodpecker, but as soon as the suet cage is empty I see the yellow-bellied sapsuckers at the wild bird seed feeder on the other side of the house while the downy woodpeckers attempt to feed from the globe and the red-bellied woodpecker gives me the stink-eye. And I thought the tuffed titmouse was a drama queen when it's preferred feeder went empty!

I'm going through a 35-lb. bag of wild bird mix each month. I've gone through a full 10-count box of suet cakes since February. I lose count on the safflower and meal worm bags because they are much smaller than the others.

I'm going to need a second job to keep feeding these free-loaders.