Sunday, May 22, 2011

No more grape jelly on the oriole feeder

So the only birds eating the grape jelly on the Oriole feeder are Scrub Jays and Titmice.  Since there are so many of these birds at the feeder, few Orioles were coming to the feeder for nectar.  I still haven't seen a single oriole eat any of the grape jelly.  So when I refilled the feeder with nectar, I cleaned the cover and removed the jelly.  It took a while for the Scrub Jays and Titmice to figure out what happened. 

Western Scrub-Jay wondering where the grape jelly went?

Oak Titmouse - There was grape jelly on this an hour ago, what happened?

They both ended up drinking the water that was in the ant moat!  You can see it in the next video.
Oak Titmouse drinking the water in the ant moat
So now that the grape jelly is gone and there are fewer scrub jays and titmice, more orioles are coming back to the feeder.

In this next video there are several Orioles eating nectar.  Look close at the first one, I think it is a young male that still has it's Juvenal plumage and some black feathers are starting to come in below it's neck.  The BirdCam shoots 10 second clips of video with sound and I edit them together is some video editing software.  Something is going wrong with the sound and at the 8 second point in each clip there is no sound.  I haven't figured out what is causing that and hope to figure it out soon.  It's annoying.  If you listen closely at the1:05 point in the video you can her a sawing sound.  It is Mike up on the deck sawing the end of a board.  He is replacing a bad board on the deck.  The sawing sound doesn't seem to bother the female oriole.

Here is a still photo of the young male with the black feather just starting to come in under his neck.
Hooded Oriole, Young male with juvenal plumage and black feathers starting to come in under its neck.

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