Feeding the Birds 12/4/09

Each Tuesday and Thursday, we rise before 7 AM and ride our bikes over to the maintenance shed of the Bentsen Rio Grande State Park. It is a park where no cars are allowed. You must walk, ride a bike, or ride the tram. We leave our bikes there and take an electric golf cart with the four kinds of food (sunflower seeds, a peanut butter/lard/seed mixture, fresh citrus fruit, and a mixture mix of seeds. The park has 13 feeding stations where we fill the feeders and also check and clean the water filters at each of the water features (since it is normally so dry here the water features are important to the birds). Usually, very few people are stirring that early although there are some avid birders out at that time and our goal is to fill the feeders early so we aren't disturbing them later in the day.
The Green Jays are soooooo beautiful! They are as noisey as the blue jays in Pennsylvania and about the same size, but I just love them! They are bold, noisey, and colorful.





In the last photo, Doug is checking the filter for the little water pond. The javalinas are checking to see if we have dropped any food for them. Javalinas (said "have-a-lina) are quite smelly due to a musk gland they have - you can tell when they are near even if you can't see them. They look like small pigs but are not related to the pig. They eat anything that doesn't eat them first. The javalinas in the park are quite tame and actually come to within a few feet of us while we are filling the feeders.