Hoarders, Losers and Winners
For years now, we’ve been watching the bird feeders from our back porch. The energy displayed by the participants has been and is huge, especially demonstrated by the chickadees and nuthatches. They’re here at a feeder one moment grabbing an offering and gone in an instant only to return way too soon to have feasted. Perhaps they are storing for a ‘rainy day’? But where?
Mystery solved. I finally caught one of the little stinkers [Red-breasted Nuthatch] in the act of pilfering and storing a peanut in the fungal folds of a lichen.
Through the brambles and the brush
There always seems to be a rush
With a peanut firm in tow
Off to store it I will go
Some will say I hoard 'enough'
But losers they when times are tough
~ Anecdote, poem and Red-breasted Nuthatch capture, Hoarders, Losers and Winners © Jerry L. Ferrara