Birds are the Gardeners best Friend.

[rainbowgardener]

Oh yay!! I always have lots of cardinals around eating the bird seed, but I didn't know they would do that. I will keep them in bird seed forever!

[applestar]

I saw the cardinal hunting again today. Once at the SFH bed where the corn is growing this year -- he jumped into a patch of clover and garlic chives in the front of the bed and came up with something green and wiggling, then tucking that one in the corner of his beak, he went after something else and, catching the 2nd prey, took off in a hurry. Probably safe to think there are more than one chick in his nest, unless one of them was for his lady love.

2nd time, he was at the SF&H -- Winter Indoor Tomato Trial bed. Funny thing was there was a wren hunting there as well. I saw the wren hopping around on the ground, poking here and there, then the cardinal barreled into where the wren had been, chasing it off, then started looking into the same mulch and under plants. I wanted to cry, "Foul! -- Poaching!" LOL I guess they use similar "baby food".

[applestar]

Something that struck me as particularly funny --

Back in early June, when the mulberry tree was *starting* to produce ripe berries and birds and animals that can climb were all over it from dawn to dusk, I noticed that tent caterpillars had made a tent nest on one of the top most branches.

There was no way I could get to it, not even by pressure hose, but all I could think was "What morons -- they really don't have any brains "

...sure enough, I don't think the tree lost much more than a handful of leaves to the caterpillars before the entire nest of them were dispersed. Why not? The birds stopped by for berry snacks for themselves and were able to pick up little baby food to take home. Or they came to get baby food and also managed to snatch a berry bite on the wing

[applestar]

Another look out the window :

This time a male cardinal -- yes, it was a cardinal again -- he was pecking at something on a tomato plant/branch. Thinking it was a fruit, I was getting ready to bang on the window in hopes of scoring it, but I didn't see any color, only green. I looked on the ground too but no sign of fruit bits or skin. It really looked like the bird was pecking at a particularly thick stub of a branch with nothing on it... Then I saw it: it was a FAT HORNWORM!

...I just harvested a couple of fruits from that plant yesterday, too. Never saw it.

After a couple more blows, I guess he finally got the caterpillar to let go because he grabbed it and hopped down to the ground.