Bring on the Orioles

Ever since I saw the orange bird feeders at Ace Hardware I have been interested in buying one.  The advertisements on the front of them guaranteed that the feeders would attrack tons of Orioles.  Doug had asked his father about them, but he felt that Orioles only fed in the spring in our area.  Thus, he hadn't had much luck.  Even Uncle Maury, the bird expert in Doug's family, said that hadn't been able to attrack Orioles to his yard.

Two weeks ago our friend, Cheryl Manning, posted about how much she loved her Oriole feeder along with pictures of the birds enjoying it.  I decided to ask her how she did it and was surprised by the answer.  "Orioles love grape jelly and came to her feeder all spring and summer."  After I read that I decided that we had to try and see what we could do to get Orioles to our yard.  Since I don't go out shopping like I used to I looked online to see if anyone had an orange feeder.  Thankfully, Walmart had one that got good reviews.  My Mom offered to buy it for our anniversary gift and within a few days our feeder had arrived.

Doug and I were hopeful that we would be able to make it work.  The design made it easy to fill as it  had a cup for grape jelly and areas for two orange halves.  We put the feeder out two weeks ago with the hope of maybe seeing the beautiful orange bird arrive at some point this summer.  I even joked as we went for a walk right after we hung it up that we'd probably see five or six Orioles on the feeder when we got home.

Although, there weren't any birds on the feeder when we got back, we were both completely surpised an hour later when we looked out the front window to see two birds enjoying the feeder.  We watched off and on for the next few hours and counted as many as five Orioles eating grape jelly and oranges.  Since that time period we have had to fill the grape jelly cup several times a day.  We even have a pair of Orioles now living in the woods in our backyard.  It has been one of the highlights of our at home quarantine and with the warmer weather arriving we can't wait to enjoy watching and listening to our Orioles even more.

Rey