When it Rains

...make a pinecone bird feeder.

March has been a wet and sick month. I feel like it's been raining forever! Sure we get one good month of rain per year in this area, while many other parts of the country get much soggier. But it still seems like it's never going to end.

And with the bad weather came the under the weather. Seriously, someone in this household has been sick for the past 25 days. We've all taken turns, multiple turns. It feels like it's never going to end.

So during this season of hibernation, we have tried to keep ourselves busy with inside activities. Low key, keep-from-going-crazy activities.

One such activity is looking out the window. We spend a lot of time parked in front of a pane, watching things happen. Mostly we see garbage trucks and mailmen coming and going. Yard maintenance and repairmen making their stops. Even the occasional neighbor braving the rain to walk their dog.

And then there's the pinecone bird feeder. Owen found an awesome pinecone which we slathered with peanut butter and rolled in bird seed. Initially we put it close to the ground and sat back to watch. No birds all day. But the next day it was cleaned off. Not a speck of butter or seed. Must be the rain, we thought. So we made another and hung it from a small branch. Next day it looked touched but still no sight of any birds. Then a few days later there was a break in the rain and we caught this on camera:


We watched proudly as our bird feeder was doing its job.

Then the next thing we knew the bird had flown off only to be replaced with this:

That daredevil squirrel was hanging by his toes to reach the snack! Hungry? Yes. Impressive? Double yes.

In the days since then we've seen the occasional bird stop by, but mostly it's that gutty squirrel who's has been licking the pinecone clean.