Emergency Food Relief For Desperate Birds

     I was very surprised at the beginning of March to see the arrival of a Robin and some Varied Thrushes out in the snow looking for food.  It seemed to me they had come a bit too soon.  Luckily for them, it had warmed up and the snow in the yard had melted.  

    I usually don’t see the Varied Thrushes in our yard, but I could sometimes hear them in the nearby woods.  This year I have been surprised to see about six of them hanging around in the yard, scratching around in the leaves.  In the summer, they find insects to eat in the leaf litter, but I doubted they were finding many this time of year, since it is still basically winter here.

    Then on Tuesday night, we had a major snowfall of more than a foot, that covered the yard.  Yesterday, I began to see fragments of leaves on the edge of our front porch.  They had come from a very narrow strip of dead leaves that were still showing at the edge of the porch.  I knew why they were scattered there; the poor hungry Varied Thrushes were trying to find food in those few dead leaves that were still showing at the edge of the porch.  They were looking for food at every possibility.

    When I cleared my driveway with the snowblower yesterday, the machine had removed all the snow, down to the ground in a few places.  Later in the day, I saw that the Thrushes, we scouring those bare places looking for food.  They seemed pretty desperate, so I figured I’d better do something.

    I spread some rolled oats around the bare spots where I thought the Thrushes would find them, and almost immediately they did, and were pecking away, picking up the flakes of oats.  I did do a bit of research, and I guess the migrating Varied Thrush does vary its diet a bit during the winter to include nuts and berries, so they shouldn’t have problems with the rolled oats.

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