Seems like Women do this and I don't get it

[johnpost]

@Skypist

That happened to me once (hawk swooped down and grabbed a smaller bird right in front of my window) and I was kind of startled by it, primarily because it didn’t occur to me that a hawk would be hunting in a pretty big human-populated neighborhood right in town instead of out in the country somewhere.

lots of tasty birds that are feed by people, purposefully and inadvertently, in cities.

hunting birds like that food source and like to live in cliff-like tall buildings or tree-like towers.

[aNewLeaf]

Male feeder of birds here.
Bird watcher as well, in the masculine sense of the word.
Field biologist of the Avians, as it were.

Among such men as myself, manly birdwatchers, agreement is complete;
the best feeders have a top predator being fed.
Hawks or hummingbirds for sure. Maybe chickadees. (Gram for gram, tougher than Chuck Norris.)

[stoplight]

@aNewLeaf

(Gram for gram, tougher than Chuck Norris.)

nothing is tougher then Chuck Norris

[carnut]

@Procrustus

My father has been feeing birds with multiple feeders my whole life. I’ve never seen it as a “women’s thing.”

My friend Rob is the person who got me doing it. But I put feeders in the tree area until my apex predator (a peregrine) was chased out of town by a bunch of crows and then the neighbor removed the dead tree he would perch in. Of course, now I want to get rid of the crows, but that’s the way it goes. I never minded the messes the peregrine left behind. It’s nature.

[BigT]

Is this just an accepted aspect to bird feeders? Because I remember my great-grandpa’s feeders, and he would always only have one or two birds at a time (it only had two seats after all), and I never saw anything happen to them.

[msmith537]

@aNewLeaf

Male feeder of birds here.
Bird watcher as well, in the masculine sense of the word.

I recognize these words, but they don’t make sense the way you arranged them.

@aNewLeaf

Hawks or hummingbirds for sure. Maybe chickadees. (Gram for gram, tougher than Chuck Norris.)

There used to be other bird-like creatures that though they were tougher than Chuck Norris. We called them “dinosaurs”.

[RobDog]

@Sudden_Kestrel

I’d prefer not to feed birds (due to the associated rodent population, not the birds themselves), but my husband insists that he’s keeping starvation at bay with his feeders. Actually, the feral cats that live in our shed do eat pretty well at the feeders.

I had some surgery a while back, so maybe it’s my lack of ovaries that makes me not care about feeding birds.

10/10 for user name / topic combo!

[Darth_Panda]

@MandaJo

I am a woman.

I do not put out a bird feeder.

If putting out a bird feeder meant I got to see a hawk take out a dove with anything approaching regularity, I’d have ten.

PETSmart guy: Can I help you ma’am?

Manda JO: Yeah, can you recommend a birdseed that will attract the kind of birds that hawks like to eat?

PETSmart guy: Yeah, this one just launched a big ad campaign:

[INDENT][INDENT]Behold, it’s the raptor![/INDENT][/INDENT]

[Dogzilla]

I think the underlying assumptions in the OP say a lot more about the OP than they do about birds, feeding birds, or the call of the wild.

Female here: I used to feed birds just to give my cat something to do/be entertained. But the squirrels kept breaking into the birdseed and making a mess of everything, so I quit. They seem to find plenty to eat at any rate, so the cat still has entertainment.

[Zsofia]

Female, and I do have bird feeders and local hawks but I’ve never actually seen one get one of “my” birds. If I did it would be AWESOME.

(Look, we have plenty of mourning doves. Come and get 'em! It’s called a bird feeder! You’re a bird!)

And yeah, I do partly fill the feeders to keep my cats entertained. But my husband enjoys watching the birds too. He’s actually started learning what they are since I’ve started keeping the feeders full again.

[Zsofia]

Too slow for the edit - if red tailed hawks prefer other prey that’s probably why I haven’t had one at the feeder - that’s what we have. I have, though, seen one take a rabbit not twenty feet from me. That is a BIG bird and there is still a little part of the human brain, evidently, that is still a very small mammal.

[MostlyUseless]

Male and I have two feeders. I keep a bird identification book on my porch so I can identify my guests. Coincidentally, Saturday morning, I discovered a torn up mouse. I am guessing that a predator got him but somehow dropped it. When I went to pick it up, it fell apart. Nature, you know.

My feeders feed mice, squirrels and birds. I am happy that all of them are there, but the mice need to stay out of sight. Actually, some nights, I leave the back porch light on just so the tree frogs can gorge.