Invasion!

Day 93: "Flying pigs" is what a friend in New York calls them, but I love my Evening Grosbeaks as much as I love Crows and Ravens.

At the time when Mt. St. Helens began erupting, I was living near Olympia WA. One of the volcanic events coincided with the migration of Evening Grosbeaks, injuring and no doubt killing many and knocking them off their normal flyway. The surviving flock arrived instead at my front door, literally. Burned and blinded birds by the score came to feed on the black-oil seed which was only a percentage of the mix I normally gave the smaller birds. When I realized they were discarding millet and milo for sunflower seeds, I started buying bags of black-oil, trying to save as many of the beautiful birds as I could.

The following year, my porch was on their map. They came in droves! Because of their bright, big bills, we dubbed them "porch parrots" or "porchies" for short. For ten years, we diligently fed them as much as they could hold...500 pounds of seed between May and August!...and every year, they returned.

When I moved away, I gave them into the keeping of a neighbor who had also been supplying them with their selected diet. To this day, she still feeds them until they're "fit to bust," and I have my own flock who seem to stick around from January through October in the knowledge that they'll be very, very well fed.